LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



hi 



| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY 



INCONSISTENT 



WITH PROTESTANT AND REFORMED 
DOCTRINE. 



BY 



Bf1>. SCHNECK, D.D. 



Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that 
the heart be established with grace. — Heb. xiii. 9. 



PHILADELPHIA: ^ 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

chambersburg: 
J. N. SNIDER. 




CINCINNATI : 

OFFICE "CHRISTIAN WORLD, 
1874. 



c 7 8 ELM ST. 



p Si 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 
B. S. SCHNECK, D.D., 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



Right of Translation Reserved. 



INSTEAD OF A PREFACE. 



[The following letter from an esteemed ministerial brother tells all 
that is necessary to be said in the way of motive for preparing the fol- 
lowing work. This letter and its author, therefore, must be regarded 
as sharing the chief responsibility in an undertaking which, in itself, 
had no attractions for me in any view of the case.] 

"Reverend and Dear Brother: 

"Like yourself, I have taken no part in the unfortunate 
controversies which have been going on for years in our 
Church. Honestly believing that matters were not so grave 
and serious as some supposed, and confiding in the oft- 
repeated declaration that our professors and others were 
misunderstood, I was led to exercise to the utmost that 
charity which ' hopeth all things and believeth all things. ' 
And so I was even disposed to defend these brethren. In 
ecclesiastical affairs I also stood by them. Yet I had to 
acknowledge to myself all the while that in defending 
their teachings — for instance, against Messrs. Bomberger, 
Good, Williard, etc.- — there was often a want of manly 
candor and an effort to avoid meeting the weightier points 
in dispute. Thus, when proofs were furnished from his- 
tory by those brethren against some of the doctrinal teach- 
ings by the professors, those proofs were as often not no- 
ticed. ^ When Reformed standards were quoted as against 
the professors on some of the gravest questions, that was 
quietly passed by. But when a little flaw in an opponent 
was thought to be discovered, then there was a loud trum- 
pet sounded in regard to it, winding up with what looked 
very much like gauzy cunning, by telling the reader that 
' such was the way with every thing which came from 
that side, and hence it was not worth while to notice the 
opponents.' Thus, some Western writer, it seems, had said 
something in reference to the present or revised Liturgy 



v 



vi 



INSTEAD OF A PREFACE. 



(' Order of Worship'), and called it the 'new Order of 
Worship' (or perhaps ' New Order of Worship'). That 
was a life-and-death question ! To put the word new be- 
fore the title was an offense of very grave magnitude; and 
so the Western man is pounced upon with ludicrous fero- 
city, and duly informed, ' as in such cases made and pro- 
vided,' that if a man does not study and duly know the 
proper and authorized title of a book, he is incompetent 
to write on the subject of the book, or for that matter, I 
suppose, on any other subject. Now look at it. The re- 
vised Liturgy ('Order of Worship') is the 'new,' as 
compared with the former or first Liturgy by the com- 
mittee, and has been so called over and over again by its 
own friends in the Messenger, and has been so called even 
by Dr. Nevin himself, the chief author of the book ! (See 
Vindic. of Lit., p. 51, etc.) Now, such and similar things 
have all along been noticed by myself and others with pain, 
but I refrained from dwelling upon them. So also the late 
effort to cast reproach upon Dr. B., Dr. G., and others, in 
connection with the conversion of several of our minis- 
ters to the Roman Catholic Church, had a most painful 
effect upon my mind ; and several others, ministers and 
laymen, I found, were impressed in the same way. I 
looked at it in this way. Here are several men who 
were among the leaders of the Mercersburg theology. 
They wrote fiery articles about it, and some of them bitter 
articles against some of the best and most useful men in our 
Church, — men whom, although I differed from them in some 
things, I could not but respect and honor. For years it 
had been believed that those recent converts were traveling 
towards Rome, but when it was sometimes hinted at, not 
only those men themselves denied it but our professors and 
others publicly denied that the theological system of Mer- 
cersburg could lead any one to that ' citadel of safety. ' 
But one and another at last did get there, and then they 
said, frankly and openly, that the teaching at Mercersburg 
led them step by step thitherward. And when now the 
opponents of Mercersburg pointed to these confessions 
(Geo. D. Wolff's confession, for instance), the professors 
et al. raise the mordio cry of : Our opponents (Dr. B. et 
al.) are 'leagued with the perverts' — 'Wolff writes arti- 
cles for the anti-Liturgical men,' etc. I confess to you, 



INSTEAD OF A PREFACE. 



vii 



dear brother, that such disingenuous treatment, even of 
my opponents as well as theirs, is more than I could stand, 
and made me hesitate — falter. I now concluded to ex- 
amine more closely into the merits of the general question 
at issue, to endeavor to get, if possible, to the bottom of 
things. I said to myself, You have not studied these sub- 
jects as you should have done ; you have taken things on 
trust. And I had not fairly gotten into the matter before 
my paper brought me the bold — I feel like saying daring — 
attacks upon the most precious and consoling truth in the 
Christian system, and which is so fully and clearly set 
forth in our Catechism. You know to what I refer, — to 
the doctrine of the Atonement. . . . 

"On further reading, I found that the same antagonism 
had also been shown against other cardinal truths, — justifica- 
tion by faith, for instance ; but not so boldly, more nega- 
tively than positively. I began now also to understand 
the frequent thrusts, innuendoes, and slighting remarks in 
regard to the Scriptures (making an ' idol of them,' and 
saying that, apart from the living minister (priest), they 
were of no more account than the Koran !) ; to doctrines, 
etc., as if they were of very little account; and speaking of 
others, who believe that they are justified by faith, that 
they believed in what was ' justification by fancy or feel- 
ing,' and more than insinuating that all real inward 
operations of the mind were shams in a religious way, — 
the experimental piety, in other words, ' of reigning Prot- 
estantism' was branded as a 'false spiritualism,' as 'Phry- 
gian Montanism,' ranting, demented 'fanaticism' — as 
an order of 'nature,' — in short, bad as Sinbad the 
Sailor. . . . 

"My heart is full as I write. I think of the glorious 
truths which you and I have preached, and without which 
we would not know what preaching was for, or of what 
worth it was. I think of the dying Christian whom I 
have seen clasping these truths to his heart as the only 
balm for his spirit, the only cordial for his fears. I think 
of the blessed martyrs, not only in Apostolic times, 
but in later centuries, who, rather than bow down and wor- 
ship saint and crucifix, chose rather to go to the stake or 
the fire, warmed within and armed for the ordeal by the 
experimental truth of Christ and Him crucified as a living 



viii 



INSTEAD OF A PREFACE. 



power in their hearts ; and I rose up from my study-chair, 
and, whilst pacing the room in the dead silence of night, 
I solemnly vowed to be bound by personal and social ties 
no longer in this matter, but, if need be, brave the un- 
friendly looks of some otherwise dear brethren ; for truth 
is higher than friendship. 

"For at least ten years had I waited to find out where 
exactly those new views would lead us, — ten years trying to 
understand these brethren, fondly hoping, like not a few 
others, that the fog would clear away and bring us a 
brighter day. But the day came not. 1 You do not un- 
derstand them,' had been iterated and reiterated until I 
became wearied with the phrasing. I said at last, ' Why 
cannot Dr. Nevin and his pupils write in such a manner that 
intelligent men can understand them ?' We can understand 
Neander (awkwardly as he often did express himself). We 
can understand Hengstenberg, and De Wette, and Ebrard, 
and Dorner, and Nitzsch, and Hodge. We can understand 
the teaching of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the 
Apostles. Why, then, after a practice of more than twenty 
years, can these men not write so that other mortals can 
understand them? If a man has something to say and 
wants others to know it (without any reserve on his part), 
he generally can make himself understood. It is said not 
to be learning, but the want of learning, that renders men 
unintelligible. Dr. Hodge had to say of his old friend Dr. 
Nevin (on the appearance of the latter' s introduction to 
Dr. Schaff's ' Principles of Protestantism,' and that was as 
long ago as a.d. 1845), tnat ne found it difficult to under- 
stand him. Surely, if such a man could not, it is not to 
be wondered at if men of ordinary calibre cannot. If a 
preacher of the gospel cannot make himself understood, it 
is usually said, either that the truth is not clear to his own 
mind, or that he does not venture to speak out courage- 
ously what is in him. Is it not so ? 

" But I think that of late we do understand these men 
tolerably well. When the articles on ' Early Christianity,' 
' Cyprian,' etc., appeared, Dr. Nevin was merely attacking 
the form of Protestantism, pulling down, ignoring (I cannot 
help being reminded of l Ich bin der Geist der stets verneinf}', 
then came the attack against the ' Sects' (Dr. Schaff called 
it 1 eine Sektenschlacht'), harsh, bitter, as if the pen had 



INSTEAD OF A PREFACE. 



ix 



been dipped in bitter fluid : so I thought when I first read 
it, with all my respect for the writer. Such thoughts as 
these came into my mind : Doctor, who gives thee authority 
to strike thy fellow-servant, redeemed by the precious blood 
of the same Saviour? Is it not the spirit of the two disci- 
ples whom the Divine Master rebuked for calling down fire 
upon their fellow-sinners ? And then, art not thou a secta- 
rist thyself? Where is thy apostolical succession, unbroken 
down to this present? And where is thy 'Church? ? . . . 
Then came the tinkering with the 8oth Question of the 
Catechism, which also at that time affected me adversely. 
It was pronounced 'unfortunate' that the ' mass' should be 
called an ' idolatry,' and of course all 'we boys' took up 
the refrain, according to the German couplet, — 

' Wie die Alien sungen 
Zwitschern die Jungen? 

Next the £ Creed' had to be tinkered ; the Greek word 
hades must be put in the place of hell. Cut bono ? The 
universal Church, Catholic and Protestant, have used this 
last term. Every intelligent layman knew its import. 
Who gave, moreover, a few men the authority to produce 
a dissonance in the repeating of the Creed ? A synodical 
president must tell us, too, that the Reformers went too far 
in their work, etc., etc. . . . 

" Now, my dear brother, all these things have been 
much on my mind ; and, to bring the matter to the point 
which is the aim of this long epistle, let me say that I 
regard it as the duty of some one to speak forth calmly, 
but decidedly and intelligibly, so that all may understand 
what are the doctrines of the Church and what are not. And 
I have it in my mind to say. you are the person. Your age 
and experience, your former position as a public man, and 
your known conservatism, seem to single you out before 
others to do just this work. Besides, although you were 
the first man who, twenty odd years ago, sounded the first 
£ bugle-blast,' as ' Irenaeus' lately told us in the Messenger, 
yet you have not taken any part, so far as I know, in the 
controversies for years. You are known, moreover, to have 
been the friend personally of our professors ; known to 
have first mentioned, and had proposed through another, 
the name of Dr. Nevin as professor in our seminary 



X 



INSTEAD OF A PREFACE. 



(prompted by your 'better half), as the lamented Rev. 
John Cares in his lifetime said, who during the special 
Synod in Chambersburg was an eye-witness of the fact in 
your own house. Then, too, you have, so far as I know, 
no reason to be dissatisfied with the Church's treatment of 
yourself ; for she has in her time loaded you with a con- 
siderable share of duties and onerous burdens, which some 
men would perhaps count as so much honor. All this and 
more, it seems to me, fits you for this needed work, whether 
it be agreeable to you or not. Remember, dear brother, 
that the path of duty is not always the path of self-choice 
or of pleasure. Think of what I say, and do as God may 
seem to bid you. I refrain from a peroration. But this 
one thing I will yet add, which I omitted to say in the 
right place : you have no prejudices against you of any 
moment, for the reasons already stated, neither can you be 
accused of seeking 1 your own' in coming before the public. 
You have no ambition to gratify, no personal animosities 
to cherish or avenge. To you many will listen who would 
not listen to others, because these have aroused prejudices 
against themselves by their active participation in con- 
troversy, to which I firmly believe they were not led by 
unhallowed motives. But my sheets are full, and you are 
weary. God direct you, bless you ! . . . . 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



Introductory Remarks 9 
What does Mercersburg Theology teach ? . . . • 14 
The Catechism teaches differently . . . . . ^ . 20 

The Doctrine of Atonement 21 

Justification by Faith ........ 43 

The Priesthood. — Are Ministers Priests ? . . . . 58 

Universal Priesthood of Believers . . . . . • 7 1 

The Opposite View in the Mercersburg Theory 75 

Confession and Absolution 83 

Purgatory .86 

Altar and Sacrifice 89 

Altar-Liturgy inconsistent with our Genius and Customs . . 105 
The Sacraments . . . . . . . . .114 

1. Baptism \ . . . 123 

Deliverance from the Power of the Devil . . .124 
Clinical Baptism (Nothtaufe) 127 

2. The Lord's Supper 129 



APPENDICES. 
A. 

The First Ten Thousand Dollar Gift ...... 147 

B. 



What the New Theory claims to hold 149 

Regeneration. By Dr. Hodge 152 

C. 

Justification and Sanctification 154 

D. 

No Human Confessors (Dr. Ryle) 155 

The Cross of Christ (Dr. Luthardt) 156 



(xi) 



xii CONTENTS. 

E. 

PAGE 

Confirmation does not complete Baptism (Dr. Luthardt) . 157 

F. 

The Office of the Ministry (Dr. Schwartz) .... 157 
The Church in the Old and New Testament (Neander) . .158 

G. 

How the New Theory has led to Rome 159 

H. 

Notes on the Gospel of John. By Dr. Schaff . . . .160 

I. 

The Roman Catholic System. By Dr. Dorner .... 166 

J- 

Divine Worship in Two Congregations 173 

Luther's Experience in Rome 173 

Progress of Ritualism 175 

How the Leaven works 176 

The Use of the Liturgy in Congregations . . . . .177 

Infant Baptism . . . . . . . . . .180 

Sacerdotal Absolution . . . . . . . .180 

Going Backwards ......... 182 

The " Defects" of the Evangelical Alliance .... 184 

The Best Mode of Counteracting Modern Infidelity . . .186 
Christ Incarnate if Man had not sinned 188 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



That the Reformed (German) Church in the 
United States has been greatly disturbed for 
twenty years past with theological controversy, 
is well known, not only throughout the length 
and breadth of the Church, but also outside of 
its communion. It is equally well known that 
the cause, as well as the starting-point, of this 
most unfortunate controversy, has been the 
promulgation of certain new philosophical and 
theological speculations, which were taught in 
our Eastern literary and theological institutions. 
Beginning with one-sided and highly-exagger- 
ated attacks on " Modern Protestantism," the 
movement has culminated in the adoption and 
teaching, by its originators and their disciples, 
of doctrines and usages entirely at variance 
with evangelical Protestantism in general, and 
the Reformed Church in particular. 

Into the merits or demerits of these new 
speculations it is not the design of these pages 
to enter at length. Those who wish to do so 

9 



IO 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



will find them defended with more or less clear- 
ness in the Mercer sburg Review and the Re- 
formed Church Messenger, and opposed by Dr. 
Bomberger's Reformed Church Monthly, the 
Christian World, of Cincinnati, and, to some 
extent also, the Western Church paper, Der 
Evangelist (in German), but especially Dr. 
Dorner's able criticism. 

The main design of these pages is an honest 
attempt to show : What are the fundamental 
doctrines of the Reformed Church according to 
the Heidelberg Catechism, and the teachings of 
standard writers from the Reformation down to' 
the present time, in regard to the points in dis- 
pute. Reference will also be made to other 
Churches of the Reformation in the sixteenth 
century, for the purpose of showing to the gen- 
eral reader that, on all the essential points under 
consideration, the entire Protestant Church at 
that period was in accord, substantially, with the 
Reformed Church. Comparing these teachings 
of the general Protestant Church — but especially 
those of the Reformed — with the new system 
'which is attempting to push aside and strangle 
the old, it will not be difficult, as the writer be- 
lieves, to see the wide departure from the old, 
evangelical, sound, and outspoken system of 
the Reformed Church as it was in the beginning, 
and from which we have no reason to depart. 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



Whilst it is deeply to be deplored that so 
much controversy has been provoked by the 
new system referred to, threatening sometimes 
to rend the Church, and in many ways producing 
disastrous results in our communion, yet it has 
necessarily led to earnest inquiry into the origi- 
nal history and polity of the Reformed Church 
on the part of many ministers, who, except for 
this disturbing element, would not be " rooted 
and grounded" as fully as they are in the blessed 
truths for which our fathers lived, and prayed, 
and died, many of them indeed amid the tortures 
of the rack, and the agonies of the burning pile 
kindled by Romish persecution. 

One portion of the Church claims that the 
new views which for twenty years past have 
been taught in our Eastern College and Semi- 
nary are irreconcilable with our Catechism and 
with evangelical Protestantism, to which they 
profess to cling with full purpose of heart. The 
other portion admits that the theology which 
they hold rests in an " entirely different style 
of religious thought" from that of their oppo- 
nents, whom they call the "anti-liturgical and 
unchurchly party." They not only admit, but 
affirm, that these two views are "two different 
versions of the gospel," yea, "two gospels ar- 
rayed against each other ; so that the one must 
look upon the other as wrong and false!' 



12 MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 

Now, as this is admitted to be the fact on both 
sides, it is necessarily a life-question for the 
Reformed Church : Who is right, and who 
wrong? If the new system of thought as first 
taught by Dr. Nevin, and afterwards and now 
taught by others and held by many of their 
pupils, is according to and consistent with evan- 
gelical Protestantism, and, as a part of it, with 
the clearly-defined doctrines of the Reformed 
Church, then they should be allowed all freedom 
to promulgate them, and all clamor should 
cease. Nay, further, if some philosophical and 
even theological speculations were held by these 
men which did not in all respects square with 
individual views of the other side, and even 
with those of standard authors of former times, 
but which were not of the nature of essentials, 
or which did not run counter to the doctrines 
of the Heidelberg Catechism, even then there 
should not be felt any ground for serious alarm. 
The Reformed Church has ever been regarded, 
even by those outside of her communion, as the 
most liberal and generous branch of the Refor- 
mation. And undoubtedly she has deserved 
that character, and may she ever deserve it. 

But, on the other hand, if the new system of 
thought affects, fundamentally and essentially, 
the Reformed system of truth as this was held 
by the Reformers and laid down in our acknowl- 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



13 



edged standards — if it is true that the new 
system is inconsistent with that which has always 
been held by evangelical Protestantism from 
the beginning — if it is true that they are " differ- 
ent versions of the gospel, yea, two gospels 
arrayed against each other," — then it is high 
time for us all to know it ; yea, high time that 
every member of the Reformed Church should 
know it. 

The writer of these pages desires carefully 
and conscientiously to compare these two dif- 
ferent gospels which are " arrayed against each 
other," without partiality and guile. If he fails 
in any respect to do this as perfectly as could 
be desired, the readers may rest assured that 
he himself feels, far more than they can, the 
imperfection of the effort, and that he will be 
heartily glad if some abler pen shall perform 
the work more perfectly and with greater clear- 
ness and force. 



2 



WHAT DOES THE SO-CALLED MERCERS- 
BURG THEOLOGY TEACH? 



In answering this question, we shall not 
attempt to enter at any length on the subject. 
These pages are intended rather for the people 
than for ministers. Still it is thought necessary 
to give some general statements, taken from 
the writings of Dr. Nevin and those who hold 
his views, in order to see what the source is 
from which result the changed sentiments on 
the Person and Work of Christ, on Baptism, 
the Lord's Supper, Regeneration, Faith, Re- 
pentance, and correlated truths. What, then, 
does the Mercersburg theology teach? What 
are its professed peculiarities ? 

The theology of Mercersburg starts, so we 
are told, with the incarnation as its central 
principle. The redemption and final salvation 
of the world, according to its teaching, is not 
accomplished by moral means (moral in the 
highest Christian sense), but by an organic 
union of the Incarnate Word with humanity, as 
a whole, and this in order to form a basis for 
the regeneration of the race. It is carried for- 
14 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



15 



ward "by an organic union of the race with the 
Incarnate Word," this Incarnate Word being 
developed and transmitted by an organic or 
historical process. Reference is, indeed, made 
to the doctrines of the atonement, justification 
by grace through faith, and also to repentance. 
But these are secondary, and by the way, to the 
important Christological (called also the organic 
" Christocentric") scheme. They are not prop- 
erly of a fundamental character, only in so far 
as they may be the means of preparing the way 
for the effectual working of this organic process. 
We quote these words from Dr. Nevin, which 
he employs in summing up a series of articles : 

" The principle of Christianity is Christ ; not 
any attribute, office, or ministry of Christ simply ; 
not any doctrine, doing, or suffering of Christ ; 
but the mediatorial Person of Christ, through 
which only room is made for His mediation in 
any other view." 

Dr. Nevin, and others of his way of thinking, 
charge those who do not fall in with their sys- 
tem that they deny that redemption flows from 
the mediatorial person of Christ, and that they 
consider His work as sundered, apart, and dis- 
tinct from His person. 

This charge is not well founded. Where, we 
may boldly ask, is this sundering of the work 
from the person of Christ taught? Surely not 



!6 MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



in any of the Evangelical Confessions — not in 
the Reformed Church, nor is it held by any 
minister of our Church, so far as we have ever 
heard. 

But the vital departure of the Mercersburg 
theology from the theology of Protestant and 
Reformed Churches lies in the question, What 
is the nature of the relation between Christ and 
the redemption ? That the Lord Jesus Christ 
is the Life, as well as the Light, of His people, 
and consequently of the Church ; that He is the 
Alpha and Omega, the source and fountain of 
all spiritual life, is a precious truth, and one 
which evangelical theology, and with it our 
Heidelberg Catechism, holds and teaches with 
the utmost clearness and precision. 

But the question is, — 

How is Christ vitally related to His people f 
We will let Dr. Nevin speak for himself, gath- 
ering his statements together in as nearly a 
connected form as we can. He says, — 

It is by "an organic conjunction with the 
Saviour," " in a way that makes Him to be the 
actual life-principle of their (believers) new 
Christian being, and shows their life to be 
mysteriously involved in His from its com- 
mencement to its close. The regeneration in 
which all starts, and the resurrection in which 
all at last becomes complete, are substantially 
one and the same process ; which is viewed also. 



MERCERSRURG THEOLOGY. 



at the same time, as proceeding throughout from 
the glorified life of the Saviour Himself." "It 
is a new creation, which, as such, cannot start 
from those who are the subjects of it, but must 
come from the fundamental regeneration of 
humanity that is brought to pass, first of all, in 
the Word made flesh." "The mystery of the 
incarnation exhibited in the living Christ is the 
fundamental principle and beginning of the 
whole Christian salvation." " The Word Incar- 
nate is the root and origin of the entire new 
creation, no less fully than He is to be consid- 
ered as being, before He became man, the pro- 
ducing cause of the old creation." " The organic 
view of Christianity underlies the true idea of 
the Church." " In this view, of course, Christ 
becomes at once for faith the root of all Chris- 
tianity and the fountain of the universal Chris- 
tian life out to the resurrection of the last day. 
He is the second Adam. That, of itself, gives 
us the whole thought, and causes us to feel the 
vital character of the relation that holds between 
Him and His people." "The process starts in 
the mystery of our Saviour's holy incarnation." 
" Christianity (therefore) is a new world of 
grace, a new order of life, which is compre- 
hended primarily in the (incarnate) person of 
Christ, and which starts forth from Him as its 
original principle and root." 

Now, what does Dr. Nevin mean by these 
declarations ? And before we give their natural 
and obvious meaning, it is well to remember 
that he does not pretend to hold the Reformed 



jg MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



view on this subject, — as we shall see hereafter, 
— for he says, openly and frankly, he " cannot 
endure" it. What then is his peculiar theory ? 

Why, most clearly this, that men are not saved 
through the sufferings and death of Christ, the 
Crucified One, but by the actual, literal, sub- 
stantial conveyance to believers of the very sub- 
stance of the life of Christ incarnate. Christ in 
His theanthropic (divine human) person is as lit- 
erally and substantially the ground, the fountain- 
head of the new life of believers, as the natural 
Adam is of their natural life. The personal 
regeneration of believers starts in and flows from 
the general regeneration of humanity, in and by 
the incarnation of the Son of God, the Word, 

Denying then that the redemption of men is 
accomplished or the work of the atonement 
secured through Christ's holy life and propitia- 
tory sacrifice on the cross (i.e., through His active 
and passive vicarious satisfaction), this new 
theory holds that we are saved by the convey- 
ance to us of this regenerated humanity in the 
incarnate Word, through certain outward chan- 
nels (the visible Church, Ordination, Baptism, 
Confirmation, etc.). The least candor must 
admit that this is a very mechanical and outward 
theory ; that it is very different from that which 
has always been held as true in the Reformed 
Church, and from what the Scriptures seem to 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



19 



teach so very plainly, and that it does by no 
means correspond with the experience of God's 
people in all ages. 

It is not necessary, nor is it our purpose, to 
pursue our inquiries on the main point any 
further in regard to the new theory, that the 
incarnation and not the death of Christ is held 
to be the fountain of salvation as well as the 
fountain of all the peculiar teachings of that 
school. This follows as a necessary conse- 
quence. If the incarnation of Christ is the 
central doctrine of the system, it must follow 
also, as Dr. Ruetenik has well observed, that 
if the unprofitable question were to be asked, 
whether Christ would have become man if Adam 
had not sinned, the answer from Nevin and his 
disciples would be, Yes. And why ? Because 
Christ's sacrificial death was not the aim of His 
incarnation; it was merely an event — a neces- 
sary event — in the process of His life. But the 
Scriptures everywhere imply that the incarna- 
tion was merely a means — a necessary step to 
the atonement, just as a seed, in order to grow 
and ripen, must be placed into the ground. 

Now let the reader turn to the 16th question 
of our Catechism, where it is asked why it was 
necessary for Christ to be very man, and also 
perfectly righteous. The answer is given in 
these words : 



20 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



" Because the justice of God requires that the 
same human nature, which hath sinned, should 
likewise make satisfaction for sin ; and one who 
is himself a sinner cannot satisfy for others." 
(See also the proof-texts quoted under the 
answer.) 

Here then we have our Catechism teaching 
most explicitly, with the Holy Scriptures, that 
the incarnation was necessary, because Christ 
could not otherwise have stiff ered death for the 
human race. The same Catechism teaches that 
He "bore in body and soul the wrath of God 
against the sins of all mankind ; that so by His 
passion, as the only propitiatory sacrifice, He 
might redeem our body and soul from ever- 
lasting damnation." (Quest. 37.) It makes the 
solemn, clear, and unequivocal declaration, that 
the " Holy Ghost teaches us in the gospel, and 
assures us by the sacraments, that the whole of 
our salvation depends upon that one sacrifice of 
Christ, which He offered for us on the cross." 
(Quest. 67.) And in that notable 80th question 
(which not a few have desired to be expunged 
because it is an honest and decided protest 
against the Romish mass) we are told that 
" the Lord's Supper testifies to us that we have 
a full pardon of all sin by the only sacrifice of 
Jesus Christ, which He has once accomplished 
on the cross." 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



21 



In all candor it may be asked just here, Can 
any truth be stated with greater clearness and 
precision ? And it may be asked further, Is not 
this the Protestant doctrine to which millions 
of the departed dead and the living have clung 
and are clinging as their greatest comfort in life 
and death ? Is it not this truth which is put into 
the mouth of the believer in that precious first 
answer of the Catechism where he is asked 
What is thy only comfort in life and death ? and 
responds in these words : " That I with body 
and soul, both in life and death, am not my 
own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus 
Christ, who with His precious blood hath fully 
satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from 
all the power of the devil," etc. 

It would be easy to show that this cardinal 
truth in the. gospel system, as taught in our 
confession of faith, rests on the obvious teach- 
ing of the word of God, of which such a pas- 
sage as i Peter i. 18, 19 gives the key-note: 
" Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not re- 
deemed with corruptible things, as silver and 
gold, . . . but with the precious blood of 
Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and with- 
out spot." But this is not what we are called 
upon to do ; for, as ministers and members 
of the Reformed Church, our acknowledged 
standard of truth is the Heidelberg Catechism. 



22 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



As ministers, we have subscribed to it and 
solemnly vowed to preach that truth ; as pro- 
fessors, to teach it ; as members, to believe it. 
All that is needed then just now, all that is con- 
templated in this little work, is to prove that the 
new system of Mercersburg-Lancaster is not in 
accordance with the system of truth as held by 
the Reformed Church, and as it is clearly laid 
down in the Heidelberg Catechism, and as held 
and taught by the Reformers and all acknowl- 
edged expounders and theological teachers of 
the Church. 

We have seen what is the unmistakable 
teaching of the Catechism. Now let us see 
whether the obvious sense of its teaching is 
borne out by other testimony of undoubted 
force and authority. 

And first, we will appeal to Ursinus, one of 
the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism. He 
wrote a commentary on the Catechism, which 
was translated into English some years ago by 
the Rev. Dr. Williard, President of Heidelberg 
College, in Tiffin, Ohio. No authority can be 
equal to that of the learned and good author of 
that book when the question concerns the sense 
and meaning in which that inimitable text-book 
is to be understood. In the introduction to the 
English translation referred to, Dr. Nevin says, 
" No other [work] can have the same weight as 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



23 



an exposition of its true meaning." Let us 
then hear how he understood the Catechism. 

In his explanation of the first answer in the 
Catechism, in treating of the "comfort" of a 
believer in Christ, Ursinus says that this com- 
fort consists, first, of "our reconciliation with 
God through Christ;" and then, as to the manner 
of it, he says that " our reconciliation (is) with 
God through the blood of Christ, that is, through 
His passion, death, and satisfaction for our sins." 
1 Peter i. 18 ; 1 John i. 7. {Comment., p. 18.) 

In explaining the phrase " to eat the crucified 
body and to drink the shed blood of Christ," 
which occurs in the 76th question, he says, — 

" The eating of the body and the drinking of 
the blood of Christ is not corporal, but spiritual, 
and embraces : 

" 1 . Faith in His sufferings and death. 

" 2. The forgiveness of sins, and the gift of 
eternal life through faith. 

"3. Our union with Christ through the Holy 
Spirit, who dwells both in Christ and in us. 

"4. The quickening influence of the same 
Spirit. Hence, to eat the crucified body and to 
drink the shed blood of Christ, is to believe 
that God receives us into His favor for the sake 
of Christ's merits ; that we obtain the remission 
of our sins and reconciliation with God by the 
same faith." (p. 382.) 

This is the Protestant, this is the Reformed 



24 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



teaching as to the way and manner in which 
fallen men are saved, not by an " organic pro- 
cess" which starts in " the mystery" of Christ's 
incarnation, by which humanity, in some way 
not clearly stated, becomes regenerated, and 
which is said to be " the fundamental principle 
and beginning of the whole Christian salvation," 
or, as it is sometimes stated, by the actual, 
literal, substantial conveyance "of the very sub- 
stance of the life of Christ incarnate." No ; the 
Catechism, and indeed the entire evangelical 
Protestant Church, knows nothing of the Chris- 
tian salvation brought about by any process so 
physical as this new theory seems to teach. It 
is to the redemption of Christ accomplished on 
the cross, and secured to the penitent believer 
by faith, not to the incarnation process, that we 
are directed for salvation. 

This is the doctrine which was taught by all 
the Reformers and by all accepted writers and 
preachers of the Reformed Church in Europe 
and America, — -Zwingle and Calvin, and the 
whole line of godly men who adorn the page 
of Church history. The former says, " There 
is, therefore, but one way to become reconciled 
to God, and that way is through Jesus and Him 
crucified. It is by preaching Christ on the cross 
that men are drawn to God, thus fulfilling the 
word of Jesus : And I, if I be lifted up, will 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 25 

draw all men after me." Calvin says, "The 
sinner, coming in contrition to the Saviour, finds 
in Him and in His finished work of redemption 
on the cross just what he needs, and this is 
what affords him hope and comfort." 

And, coming to the present age, we hear the 
same harmonious testimony from the lips of 
God's honored servants. It is needless to 
multiply quotations. But let us hear the testi- 
mony of a man whose name is loved and 
honored in America as it is in Europe, and who 
cannot be accused of being unsound to the 
confession of the Reformed Church. I mean 
Dr. F. W. Krummacher. It is from his address 
of welcome to the members of the Evangelical 
Alliance in Berlin in 1857. The whole eloquent 
and spirited address is a noble testimony of his 
oneness with true Christians who hold to Christ 
the Head as the " All and in All." After saying, 
as if in the name of all those who were then before 
him, that they bowed to the Holy Scriptures as 
the Divine infallible revelation given from God, 
and that no other can be believed in, whether 
it be called reason or tradition, hierarchy or 
church, or by whatever other name it may be 
known, nor that any can stand above it, and 
affirming the declaration of faith in the triune 
God, the lost and sinful state of man, etc., he 
proceeds to say, — 
3 



26 MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 

" But we also comfort ourselves with the joy- 
ful assurance that this great grace has appeared 
in Jesus Christ, who is God manifest in the 
flesh ; and in His mediatorial work we see the 
only but the all-sufficient cause of our salvation 
and of our everlasting happiness. We take hold 
of Christ by faith; we do Him honor; with 
body and soul we give ourselves to Him ; and 
thus we conclude, that though we are sinful, 
miserable, and guilty in ourselves, we stand 
justified before the Judge of the living and the 
dead, not on account of our faith as a virtue, 
much less on account of our good works, but 
solely for the righteousness of the Great Surety, 
which is reckoned as grace to those who have 
faith in Him who justifies the ungodly. On 
account of the merits of Jesus, the Holy Ghost 
declares us in our conscience free from sin, gives 
witness with our spirit that we are the children 
of God, fills us with that peace which passeth 
all understanding, and continues in us that work 
of sanctification which He has already begun 
in us." 

The same Krummacher holds the following 
language in a sermon on the " Cross of Christ :" 

"Christ the Mediator! Touched with grati- 
tude, I give Him, the Crucified One, my full con- 
fidence ; and after having taken my place as the 
Mediator, He now becomes also my Redeemer 
and Saviotir. For His sake I have been absolved 
from all the guilt of sin. Now He also breaks 
the dominion of sin in me, by giving me His Holy 
Spirit, making me a partaker of His nature, and 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



2 7 



thus brings about a new mode of life well pleas- 
ing to God. I now do not live any more unto 
myself, but unto Him, who has purchased me 
with His blood!' . . . "The cross, with its 
sweet tones of invitation, and at the same time 
its solemn admonitions to repentance — yes, the 
cross, with the suffering, dying Lamb of God 
upon it — the cross is the centre of the gospel!' 

This clear testimony from the able court- 
preacher of Prussia and the loved favorite of 
the late king, now with God, is essentially 
different from the theory which makes the in- 
carnation the "centre of Christianity." Krum- 
macher, it cannot be doubted, was soundly Re- 
formed, Evangelical, and Protestant. Whoever 
was Rationalist, certainly he was not. And the 
utterances in the opening address, above re- 
ferred to, were heard by hundreds of the 
choicest spirits from all parts of the Christian 
Church with unanimous accord, — the leading 
men of the Evangelical Church of Germany, 
England, France, Switzerland, Scotland, and 
elsewhere, — as with one voice they proclaimed 
their faith in Christ crucified, as the Lamb of 
God which taketh away the sin of the world. 
And need it be said that the same truth has 
been held in the same way by all sound Pro- 
testants, not only in Europe, but also in this 
country, and by none more emphatically than 
by the ministry of the Reformed Church, among 



28 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



the dead and the living ? Among the former we 
recall such men as Schlatter and the two Drs. 
Hendel, Otterbein, and Fries; Dr. S. Helfen- 
stein, Jon. Helfenstein, and Reiley, Runkel, Dr. 
Becker, and D. Wagner ; Drs. Mayer and 
Bibighaus ; Drs. Pomp and Hoffeditz ; P. Pauli 
and Vandersloot, Sr. ; Thomas Winters, Sr., and 
Gloninger ; Drs. A. Helfenstein and Zacharias ; 
W. Hiester and the Rahausers ; the earnest 
Beecher and the devoted Rice ; Smaltz and 
Leinbach ; Gutelius and the two Fishers; I. 
Gerhart and the lovely Cares ; Dr. Heiner, 
H. Wagner, and Dr. Rauch* (the first Presi- 
dent of Marshall College), Dr. Hoffmeier, and 
by scores of others. 

BUT WHO DENIES THIS DOCTRINE? 

It may perhaps be said that no one denies 
this truth, and hence the proofs furnished are 
a fruitless and unnecessary labor. Let us see 
how this is. Instead of selecting paragraphs 
and single sentences from numerous articles by 

* Out of a number of quotations from Dr. Rauch's sermons, let the 
following serve as a specimen on this subject : " Had Christ not been 
crucified, the kingdom of truth and of love would never have been 
established on earth. He died, not because He could not shun the 
malice of the Jews, but that He might reconcile the world to God ; and 
the Father makes use of their arm to slay Him whose pure and inno- 
cent blood was to be the ransom for our sins. Now the sinner is 
justified by faith without the deeds of the law." — The Inner Life, 
edited by Dr. E. V. Gerhart, 1856, p. 152. 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



2 9 



various writers in the Mercersburg Review, and 
the Messenger, in which the opposite truth is 
taught, we have an article on this very subject 
in the Messenger of September 17, 1873, from 
one of the professors in Lancaster, which is 
clear and outspoken ; it could not be more so. 
The title of the article is, " The Doctrine of the 
Catechism concerning the Atoning Death of 
Christ." 

The writer sees and feels the force of the 
language employed in the Catechism touching 
this subject. He admits, in fact, that it requires 
one to understand its words in a sense which 
he does not wish them to have. Here is the 
introductory paragraph : 

"A superficial study of the Heidelberg Cate- 
chism may make the impression that the atoning 
sacrifice of Christ accomplished on the cross is 
not only essential, but also fundamental and 
principial, in its doctrinal system of redemption. 
It teaches, that Christ ' bore in body and soul 
the wrath of God against the sin of the whole 
human race, in order that by His passion, as 
the only atoning sacrifice, He might redeem 
our body and soul from everlasting damnation' 
(Q- 37) 5 tnat tne sacrifice of Jesus Christ on 
the cross is the only ground of our salvation, 
and that ' our whole salvation stands in the one 
sacrifice of Christ, made for us on the cross' 
(Q. 67). Again, the Catechism says 'that we 
have full forgiveness of all our sins by the one 



3Q 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



sacrifice of Jesus Christ' (Q. 80). Many other 
expressions occur, which are equally explicit' ' 

But why now is it said that the " supe7'ficial 
study of the Heidelberg Catechism" makes such 
an impression ? Have all the theologians, and 
all the millions of pious people, learned and 
unlearned, for hundreds of years past, been 
nothing but " superficial readers" ? What other 
"impression" upon the minds of the devout 
readers sf that Catechism could by any possi- 
bility be made, than " that the atoning sacrifice 
of Christ accomplished on the cross" is essential 
and fundamental ? That any Protestant teacher 
of theology, and especially one in the Reformed 
Church, should ever have received any other 
impression, is most marvellous. 

But let us hear him further : 

"That this doctrinal system underlies and 
animates the Heidelberg Catechism we cannot 
believe." 

" We cannot believe" ! He cannot believe it, 
although the entire Protestant Church — yea, we 
might say, even the Roman Catholic Church — 
at least in a formal way — has always held to the 
truth, and the Heidelberg Catechism unmistak- 
ably teaches it, so that even the professor admits 
that the obvious language of this book makes 
the impression upon the reader to that effect. 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



3* 



And why can he not believe it, then? Here 
are his reasons : 

" The notion is incompatible with the central 
position of the Creed ; incompatible also with 
its conception of the gospel, as an order of 
grace standing in the personal history of Jesus 
Christ." 

Here we have the frank avowal that the 
" notion" (only a notion) of the atoning sacrifice 
of Christ, as previously stated, " is incompatible 
with the central position of the (so-called) Apos- 
tles' Creed ;" and, further, " incompatible also 
with its conception of the gospel, as an order 
of grace standing in the personal history of 
Jesus Christ." 

This is not a very clear statement, to be sure. 
But any one who has carefully read the new 
(Mercersburg) theology sees at a glance what 
it means. It means that men are not saved by 
the atoning sacrifice of Christ, but by partici- 
pating in the divine-human life of Christ. In 
other words, we are saved by the "actual, lit- 
eral, substantial conveyance to us" of the very 
substance of the life of Christ incarnate, and 
that redemption, as applied and effected, does 
not flow from " Christ and Him crucified" (for 
this is said to be only a mode, means, or condi- 
tion of the process), but from the incarnation. 
To the Creed is given a peculiar meaning — a 



32 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



purely fanciful, subjective theory, and, with this 
construction put upon it by the new theology, 
it is made to give the key-note to all that is em- 
braced under the name of Christianity. Virtu- 
ally, it is placing the Creed above the written 
gospel. Now then we see plainly enough that 
the reason why the Lancaster professor cannot 
believe in what he is pleased to call the "notion" 
of the Catechism (and the word of God as 
well), is because it will not fit in with the new 
philosophical and theological system to which 
he holds. Nay, it is antagonistic to it from 
every point of view. It is altogether " another 
gospel," starting in and "flowing from the gen- 
eral regeneration of humanity in and by the 
incarnation of the Son of God, the Word." 
This is called a process, an "historical process." 
By means of it we are saved, according to this 
new theory, not by Christ's passion and death, 
appropriated \ y faith, but by participating in 
the theanthropic or divine-human nature of 
Christ, a view which the learned Dr. Dorner 
calls " a manufactured theory which cannot sup- 
port itself by the Holy Scriptures."* 

The method which the writer referred to em- 
ploys to sustain his position that the Catechism 
cannot and does not teach what it seems to do, 



* Dr. Dorner's " Liturgical Conflict in the Reformed Church of 
America," 1868. 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



33 



is a very lame and far-fetched one. He says 
the emphasis which it lays on the sacrifice of 
Christ was intended rather as an opposition to 
the "contrary errors of the Roman Church. 
The sacrifice of Christ is opposed to the sacri- 
fice of the mass ; and the infinite merit of His 
sacrifice to the supposed merit obtained by 
monastic vows, arbitrary penance, and self-in- 
flicted bodily pains." 

To this unheard-of, pointless, and unnatural 
assertion, which contains the very embodiment 
of its own weakness, let it be remarked : 

1. That the Catechism does not furnish the 
most remote foundation for such an assertion in 
the passages referred to, except in the 8oth 
Question, which was intended to be a testimony 
against the Romish mass, not by " implication," 
but directly, positively. But so far as the 37th 
and 67th Questions are concerned, it is utterly 
futile to draw from them any other sense or 
meaning than what the clear, obvious words 
teach. There they stand, and no turning and 
twisting can make anything else out of them. 

2. The other remark is, that if the meaning 
of the Catechism is different, by implication, at 
least, from what it seems to be, is it not strange 
that that meaning was never discovered before ? 
For more than three hundred years has that 
precious little work been regarded as containing 



34 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



one of the clearest expositions of divine truth, 
outside of the Bible, the Church has ever pos- 
sessed. Its compact yet full teachings on the 
doctrine of redemption, the atonement by 
Christ, and its application to the believer, have 
been held and believed, have ever been preached 
and expounded, in accordance with the obvious, 
plain meaning of its language. Hundreds of 
commentaries have been written on the Cate- 
chism in Germany, Holland, and America, and 
not one of the writers ever discovered that the 
Catechism did not mean just precisely what it 
taught. What no one of them was learned 
enough to find out, has been, however, discov- 
ered at this late day, as it would seem ! The 
entire Protestant Church has so understood it, 
has indorsed it, and the Reformed Church has 
gloried in it. No Reformed minister or theo- 
logian, of any standing or character, ever held 
the view that the Catechism taught anything 
else than that the sacrifice of Christ on the 
cross " was essential, fundamental, and principial 
in its doctrinal system of redemption." Was 
there ever a breath to the contrary uttered in 
our Church, even twenty or twenty-five years 
ago ? Did not Dr. Nevin himself write a little 
book in commendation of the Catechism ? and 
did not the Reformed Church in Germany and 
in this country unite in celebrating the three 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 35 

hundredth anniversary of the Catechism, without 
ever intimating, in any of the addresses, essays, 
and speeches, that the teachings of that book 
were not properly apprehended, or that what 
seemed to teach this cardinal truth was a mere 
antithesis against some of the errors of the 
Roman Church? Never! No, never! 

But let us hear again what the author of the 
article in the Messenger says, for the purpose 
of turning the point against those who believe 
differently from himself : 

" When the Catechism emphasizes the ex- 
clusive efficacy of Christ's death," he says, "the 
implied opposition does not pertain to any other 
cardinal fact in His history. His death is not 
opposed to His birth on the one side, or His 
♦ resurrection on the other. It does not inculcate 
the idea that the only ground of salvation is 
the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, not His conception 
and birth, not His resurrection and glorification ; 
as if the life were not as necessary as the death 
of Christ, and His exaltation and glory as 
necessary as His humiliation." 

Let us ask the writer of the foregoing two 
sentences whether he can point out any one in 
the Reformed Church who ever taught or held 
that the Catechism implied any opposition to His 
birth or resurrection, or any other cardinal fact 
in Christ's history. Opposition ! There is no 
opposition in the case. Who, it may be asked, 



36 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



ever said that Christ's death was opposed to 
His birth, on the one side, or His resurrec- 
tion, on the other? It might be interesting 
to know. 

But when the writer says that the Catechism 
" does not inculcate the idea that the only 
ground of salvation is the sacrifice of Jesus 
Christ, not His conception and birth, etc.," we 
must ask him what right he has to presuppose 
any opposition to the conception and birth, 
resurrection and glorification of Christ. The 
Catechism in the Question referred to (37) 
treats of the " only ground of our salvation." 
It says that the " Holy Ghost teaches us in the 
gospel, and assures us by the sacraments, that 
the whole of our salvation depends upon that 
one sacrifice of Christ, which He offered for us 
on the cross." Here the Catechism does indeed 
say what the professor denies, that the only 
ground of our salvation depends on the sacrifice 
of Christ, but it does not imply that the birth 
and resurrection were not essential, antece- 
dent, and consequent facts to the vicarious 
death of Christ. St. Paul says, "God forbid 
that I should glory, save in the cross of our 
Lord Jesus Christ" (Gal. vi. 14). St. John 
says, " The blood of Jesus Christ His Son 
cleanseth us from all sin" (1 John i. 8). Do 
these and other like declarations of God's 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 37 

holy word imply any opposition, or even a 
slighting of the birth and resurrection of 
Christ ? Just as much, and no more, than 
does the Catechism.* 

It is then not in the atonement as something 
separate and apart from Christ's person and 
work in any form, but in Christ as born, risen, 
crucified, and glorified, that we, with the uni- 
versal church of Christ, believe. But we do 
believe also, with the same universal church of 
Christ, that the sacrifice of Christ on the cross 
as the culmination, the crowning fact of all that 
went before, " is the only ground of our salva- 
tion," and " that our whole salvation stands in 
the one sacrifice of Christ." 

It might seem superfluous, in a case so plain 
and self-evident, to bring forward any more 
proof. But let us direct attention to one more. 
It is in the formula of the Lord's Supper as 

* To give prominence to the death of Christ on the cross has ever 
been the glory of evangelical Protestantism, and the want of it has 
always been regarded as the forerunner, if not the actual present ex- 
istence, of Rationalism. How strangely does it sound, therefore, to 
have it said in the editorial columns of our Church paper (Oct. 1, 1873) 
that " one of the great prevailing wrong tendencies of the day, when 
speaking of the atonement of Christ, as related to the grand scheme 
of redemption, is the disposition to give such prominence to the death 
of Christ on the cross," and then charging that by so doing it " casts 
into the shade, if it does not exclude, everything else relating to His 
person and work" ! The eminent Dr. Luthardt says, " The central 
point of the revelation of redemption is the atonement on the cross, 
the forgiveness of sins." — Lecture IX. of his works. 
4 



38 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



contained in the Palatinate Directory (Heidel- 
berg, a.d. 1563, only three years after the 
publication of the Heidelberg Catechism), where 
it is said, — 

" From this institution of the Holy Supper 
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we see 
that He directs our faith and confidence to His 
perfect sacrifice, — once offered on the cross, — 
as to the only ground and foundation of our sal- 
vation, in which He became to our hungry and 
thirsty souls the true meat and drink of ever- 
lasting life." 

Yea, verily, the professor is right in saying 
that the Catechism " emphasizes" this doctrine, 
and so have all sound theologians from Ursinus 
down to Krummacher and Dorner. The pro- 
fessor, however, and with him the leaders of the 
new system of Mercersburg and Lancaster, do 
not emphasize, but, on the contrary, they do not, 
yea, they " cannot believe it." And the reason 
why they cannot believe it has been stated: 
namely, their new theory of philosophy and 
theology has no room for it. It starts out from 
another principle altogether. In that theory a 
fusion of the theanthropic or divine-human life 
of the Word with humanity is the central doc- 
trine, and this rules the whole system of their 
theology ; and in their view there is no such 
thing as a sacrifice for sin on the cross, as it has 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



39 



always been held by the evangelical Church * 
Just here it is that the new system is unsound 
to the core, anti-Protestant, and so anti-Re- 
formed. Its friends may endeavor as much as 
they please to make it appear that the opposing 
view is held only by "Puritans, fanatics" or, 
mayhap, by a fraction of " Rationalistic" theo- 
logians who know no better. This way of 
throwing mire on a hated few looks very like 
a ruse. It is not a small fraction, it is not some 
one-sided Puritans and fanatics, nor some 
modern " unchurchly sects" — Winebrenners or 
Mormons it might be, — that are meant, merely, 
although when pressed on this subject they will 
sometimes point to these as being their " objec- 
tive point" of attack. But they mean some- 
thing " broader and deeper" than that. Dr. 
Nevin speaks out more candidly, and freely 
admits this, for he tells us that the "reigning^ 
theology of Protestantism" is of an altogether 
different type, it is on an entirely different basis 
from that of the new theology, it is " another 
gospel." He says of his theology, that it "rests 
in a wholly different style of religious thought" 



* Thus, Dr. Nevin asserts that the death of Christ on the cross is 
to be regarded as " a necessary all-glorious mode or condition only 
of the process" of redemption by His incarnation. The redemption 
of mankind, according to this view, was by the incarnation, and not 
by the death, of Christ. 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



from that of the other side. Nay, he says that 
they are two gospels arrayed against each 
other, so that the one must look upon the other 
as wrong and false ! (See Appendix B.) And 
here in this fundamental doctrine of the atone- 
ment by the Lord Jesus Christ is the divergence 
in its beginnings. The new theology starts in 
the incarnation, and from that develops its 
peculiar views in such sense as to set aside, or 
change and modify, every doctrine of the Chris- 
tian system. Not a few " ranting sects," there- 
fore, nor a minority of ministers in this or that 
denomination, are wrong, according to this new 
system, but the entire Protestant Church of all 
branches, German, English, and American.* 



* We all remember how, some years ago, there was a constant 
appeal made to German theology as favoring the new Mercersburg 
system. The writer of these pages once modestly asked an ardent 
favorer of the new position to what German authors he referred as 
being in accord with the Mercersburg theology. He did not know 
any one in particular, was at last his reply, but he thought Tholuck 
and Krummacher (sic!). In the course of time, however, German 
theology and its glory had departed, and it was so announced in the 
most public and pronounced way, and "Anglican" (the High Church 
or Puseyite movement) was declared to be the watchword, although 
this even does not hold to any such theosophic or rationalistic specu- 
lation in regard to the incarnation. This view is, what its friends claim 
for it, new, at least in its application to Christian doctrines in the his- 
torical Protestant churches. It is subjective in the worst sense of the 
term, i.e. human philosophical speculation carried into the word of 
God. It is also eminently unhistorical. So also was Swedenborg's 
speculation new in its day. The learned and well-meaning Count 
dreamed learnedly and much, but the world has become neither wiser 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



For nothing is more palpable than that on this 
doctrine of the atoning sacrifice of Christ all of 
them are a unit. All hold to it as fundamental 
to the Christian system, with more or less clear- 
ness. Only the leading men of this new the- 
ology " cannot believe" it to be such, and they 
cannot because their system is constructed upon 
an entirely different theory. According to it 
there is no room for the atoning sacrifice of 
Christ as a fundamental article in the doctrinal 
system of redemption. And although the Hei- 
delberg Catechism (with the whole Protestant 
evangelical Church) holds to it as with one 
voice, those brethren cannot believe it, and, 
more painful than all, they attempt to eviscerate 
the doctrine and give it an entirely different 
meaning, pronouncing every one who believes 
in that precious truth as taught in our symbol 
and the word of God, a " superficial" reader. 
Let the bold declaration of a professor in our 
theological seminary at Lancaster stand out 

nor better for his philosophic dreams, and few now care to be at the 
pains to understand them. Dr. Dorner, whom Dr. Nevin claimed as 
favoring his views (in a speech at the Dayton Synod), regarding his 
influence as of immense weight to his new theory, and so likewise Dr. 
Ullmann and Dr. Jul. Miiller, have since been cast out as of no ac- 
count whatever, chiefly, it would seem, because they cannot judge of 
theology and philosophy from the clogs of a State Church around 
them ! And yet who have spoken more freely and boldly on the 
freedom of the Church from the State than Dr. Dorner, right under 
the shadow of the Prussian palace ? 
4* 



42 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



clearly before the whole Church, as expressed in 
his own words : 

"A superficial study of the Heidelberg Cate- 
chism may make the impression that the atoning 
sacrifice of Christ accomplished on the cross is not 
only essential, but also fundamental and principial, 
in its doctri7ial system of redemption. . . . That 
this doctrinal system underlies and animates the 
Heidelberg Catechism we cannot believe." 

Looking back upon what we have thus far 
written, we may well ask the question at this 
point, Shall we allow ourselves to change the 
entire meaning of the Heidelberg Catechism, 
and all the Reformed Confessions, and the expe- 
rience of the best Christians in all ages, and also 
the clear teachings of Holy Writ, in favor of 
such a purely human speculative view as this, 
that when Christ became man He assumed 
generic humanity and so in principle redeemed 
humanity ? It is in truth a mere assumption, 
without a particle of proof, that there is such a 
thing as "generic humanity." It is furthermore 
a pure assumption, without a particle of proof, 
that Christ assumed generic humanity. It is, 
in the third place, a pure supposition, without 
any proof at all, that Christ's assumption of 
humanity was a redemption of man. The 
Scriptures point to the cross as the redemption. 
Thus this system is brought into being by piling 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



43 



assumption upon assumption: so unstable is it 
in its foundation. But worst of all, as we have 
shown, it entirely changes the gospel of salva- 
tion. Can any one point out an example in the 
New Testament where an apostle, or any other 
convert, bases his hope and certainty of salva- 
tion upon any such basis as this ? " God forbid," 
says Paul, " that I should glory, save in the cross 
of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Gal. vi. 14) . The same 
Paul, thrice in a single chapter (Col. i. 14, 19, 20), 
emphasizes the true doctrine as follows : " It 
pleased the Father that in Him should all full- 
ness dwell ; and, having made peace through the 
blood of the cross, by Him to reconcile all things 
to Himself." If this new theory prevails, we 
shall have to re-write not only the Heidelberg 
Catechism, but the New Testament itself. As 
that blessed book has been apprehended by the 
long line of martyrs, confessors, and believers, 
it gave forth no such sound as that. 

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 

Another fundamental doctrine of the gospel 
and of the evangelical Protestant Church, is 
that of justification by faith. It relates to the 
question how man comes into possession of the 
great blessings of the redemption accomplished 
by Christ. No truth can be of greater impor- 
tance than the truth which tells him how he may 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



be just .before God, or, in other words, what he 
must do to be saved. The gospel answer is 
clear as a sunbeam, and it comes from the lips 
of inspired apostles : " Believe on the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." It 
comes from Christ Himself : " Him that cometh 
unto me I will in no wise cast out." That it is 
effective is testified to by all the apostles : " But 
as many as received Him, to them gave He 
power to become the sons of God, even to 
them that believe on His name" (John i. 12). 
"Therefore, being justified by faith, we have 
peace with God through our Lord Jesus 
Christ" (Rom. v. 1). And yet this clearly-re- 
vealed truth became darkened and overloaded 
with so much error during the centuries before 
the Reformation, that it was scarcely understood 
by one in a thousand. Bodily self-inflictions, 
penances, going into cloisters away from the 
outside world, paying money to erect shrines 
and altars to the saints and the Virgin, — these 
were some of the ways by which men were to 
obtain the favor of God and the peace of their 
consciences. And when in the sixteenth cen- 
tury this system of man had reached its 
pinnacle, when salvation was literally sold for 
money by traveling monks (a Tetzel, in Ger- 
many, for instance), God raised up men in 
different countries of Europe to re-announce 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



the simple teachings of God's Holy Word on 
this subject. The Reformation proclaimed with 
clarion voice that the sinner is justified by God 
freely, and that when he humbly approaches 
Him he can lay hold of (or believe) the blessed 
truth that his sins are forgiven for the sake of 
the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This truth 
the Reformers found in the gospel ; they found 
it sealed to them by the sacraments ; they found 
it witnessed by the Holy Spirit in their personal 
consciousness, in their own experience. So 
Luther, so Zwingle, Melanchthon, Calvin, and 
all the host of great and good men of that 
period ; thus they believed, thus they wrote 
and preached, and in this faith they died full of 
hope and peace and joy. When Olevianus, one 
of the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism, 
was on his dying bed, and was asked by one 
whether he was certain of his salvation, he re- 
plied by a single word in LaXm, " Certissimus- /" 
" perfectly sure," and, laying his hand upon his 
breast, quietly expired. These men of God had 
read such passages as these in their Bible : 
" The just shall live by faith." " We have redemp- 
tion through His blood." " He (Jesus) hath made 
peace through the blood of His cross." We are 
justified through the redemption that is in Him. 
" We are justified in His name." " Believe on the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved" 



4 6 



MER CERSB UR G THE OLGGY. 



(Gal. iii. 1 1 ; Eph. i. 7 ; Rom. iii. 24 ; 1 Cor. i. 30 ; 
Acts xvi. 31). 

In perfect accordance with this truth is the 
teaching of the Heidelberg Catechism, as we 
shall now prove. 

The 2 1 st Question and Answer read as fol- 
lows : 

" What is true faith ? 

" True faith is not only a certain knowledge, 
whereby I hold for truth all that God has re- 
vealed to us in His word, but also an assured 
confidence, which the Holy Ghost works by the 
gospel in my heart ; that not only to others, 
but to me also, remission of sin, everlasting 
righteousness, and salvation, are freely given 
by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of 
Christ's merits." 

Faith, therefore, according to the Catechism, 
consists in knowledge and an assured confidence ; 
a knowledge of that in which we are to believe, 
and an application which every one who exer- 
cises this faith or confidence makes to himself, 
that his sin is freely remitted unto him for the 
sake of Christ's merits. " The efficient cause of 
justifying faith," says Ursinus, "is the Holy 
Ghost. The instrumental cause is the gospel, 
in which the use of the sacraments is also com- 
prehended. The subject of this faith is the will 
and heart of man." 

So much for the Catechism. 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



47 



Let us now quote only a few other authori 
ties, not the authorized confessions of other 
evangelical communions, for these, as every- 
one can see, are all in full accord on the sub- 
ject ; but theologians of acknowledged standing 
in Protestant Christendom. 

Dr. Krummacher (Reformed) : "The doctrine 
of justification through the merits of Christ, and 
received by faith, is the dividing line between 
the Protestant evangelical and the Roman 
Church. It is here we obtain that joyful assu- 
rance of our salvation, and the consequent 
peace which flows therefrom. And our own 
Reformed Church holds and ever has held fast 
to this truth." Tholuck (Lutheran) : "When, 
looking at yourself and within yourself, you 
feel sad and despondent, then look with peni- 
tence and faith ever deeper and deeper into the 
centre, to Jesus Christ, who of God is made 
unto us wisdom, righteousness (justification), 
sanctification, and redemption. Forever will it 
remain true that we are justified by faith and 
have peace with God through our Lord Jesus 
Christ" (Gewisseitspredigten, i860). Dr. Lut- 
hardt (Lutheran): "The cause of forgiveness 
(of sins) is in God alone and in His free mercy. 
It is this which forgives us for the sake of Christ 
and His redemption It is through this that 
God's holiness has made it possible for itself to 
forgive us. But it is our faith which lays hold 
upon this grace, for it is a faith in the grace of 
redemption. It is by faith that we obtain for- 



48 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



giveness, for, as Luther says, 'What thou be- 
lievest, that thou hast.' Not that the ground 
of forgiveness lies in our faith, as though it 
were so meritorious an act, so good a work, 
that God must reward it ; nor in our love which 
proceeds from faith, nor in our repentance 
which begets it ; it is not in us, but only in God 
and in the atoning death of Jesus Christ. It is 
this which, with the Apostle Paul, we call jus- 
tification, namely, our acquittal from all guilt 
and punishment, and our admission to the 
rights of sonship. Not because we are not 
sinners, but though we are sinners ; nay, just 
because we are sinners, and believe in His 
pardoning grace, are we pronounced free, 
guiltless, and just, and received into favor. 
Justification, then, is not a change which takes 
place in tcs, but, if we may so speak, an occur- 
rence which takes place in God, — a change in 
the sentence He passes upon us, in His view 
of us, in our value in His sight. He chooses 
to regard and treat us as His children ; for the 
Spirit of God bears witness with our spirits 
that we are the children of God ; bears this 
witness through the Word of God, which 
addresses us in those loving terms, My son, 
my daughter, be of good comfort, thy sins 
are forgiven thee ; thy faith hath made thee 
whole. Thus does the Spirit, by means of 
the Word, produce in our hearts the glad, 
the God-reposed assurance which a Chris- 
tian must possess, if he is to live and die 
as a Christian should ; for from this alone 
can grow a happy childlike love to God, a 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



grateful obedience in life, and a joyful hope 
in death."* 

Dr. Pressense (the eminent French Reformed 
divine) : 

" We never could succeed in weaving a wed- 
ding garment such as would allow of our sitting 
down at our heavenly Father's banquet. We 
must receive it from the Redeemer's hand ; and 
this robe is His own royal robe, which He has 
dyed in the crimson of His own blood. We 
cannot appear before God except as we are 
clothed in His righteousness. But He will not 
clothe us in this until we have approached Him 
with an ardent desire to receive His grace, and 
until, like the poor daughter of Israel, who met 
Him one day, we have seized with a trembling 
hand that holy robe with which we must be cov- 
ered. In other words, we can only share in 
His merits through the faith which unites us to 
Him. What He did for us eighteen hundred 
years ago is of no value without this faith, this 
personal adherence, to Him. 



* " Saving Truths of Christianity," by Doctor and Professor Lut- 
hardt. Translated from the German by Sophia Taylor. Edinburgh : 
T. & T. Clark. New York : Scribner, Welford & Co., 1868. To stu- 
dents and intelligent laymen no more instructive, interesting, and 
edifying book can be recommended than this. Its strong arguments 
are clearly stated; its illustrations are beautiful and convincing; whilst 
its style is remarkable for its simplicity. Appended to these ten 
lectures are literary and theological notes covering 150 pages full of 
profound learning. The author is a Lutheran of the moderate 
Evangelical type, but just such a Lutheran as all Christians must honor 
and love. We cordially recommend the work to ministers and people. 
5 D 



50 MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 

u He only will be saved who unites himself 
to Christ, not with a view of offering again a 
sacrifice which was perfect in itself, but in order 
to make it his own by an earnest acceptance 
and a living faith. If the imputation of Christ's 
merits was all external, it would be found that 
He had obeyed in order to dispense us from 
obeying. If that had been His object, He need 
not have left heaven at all." 

But let this suffice in the way of quotation. 

The doctrine of justification by faith is that of 
the universal Evangelical Church of Christen- 
dom. 

Whilst penning these lines, the newspapers of 
New York and Philadelphia are sending forth 
over the length and breadth of the land the 
proceedings of the Evangelical Alliance* in the 
former city, where are assembled representative 
men, Christian ministers and laymen, from the 
various nations of Europe, and even from the 
far-off Orient, and every man of them who has 
spoken his sentiments, — the dignitary of the 
Church of England, the learned professor in 
the university, the nobleman, Reformed, Lu- 
theran, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Independent, 
Methodist, all, — all as with one voice testify to 
this doctrine as a standing article of the Chris- 
tian system. Constrained for months past by 



* For a further notice of the Evangelical Alliance, see Appendix. 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



51 



family affliction to spend his time in the nar- 
rower circle of his home, the writer has been 
quickened and refreshed in spirit whilst reading, 
day after day, the deep-toned and inspiriting 
utterances of these Christian men, commingling 
from all parts of the world, and touching thou- 
sands of other hearts all over Protestant Chris- 
tendom.* Not one discordant utterance has 
been heard on this precious gospel truth. Let 



* And yet, sad to say, one of our professors in the Lancaster Semi- 
nary is found making an attempt — feeble and futile, to be sure — to 
prejudice us against the (then prospective) meeting of that body, by 
raising objections against one of the topics in its programme, on the 
subject of " Prayer for the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Christians" 
throughout the world, and other objects. In several articles in the 
Alessenger a long and labored effort was made to show that prayer for 
such blessings is wrong, and the sentiment false, because the Holy 
Spirit is always in Christ's mystical body, the Church ; that the Holy 
Ghost always " abides and works in the hearts of those who are bap- 
tized into Christ." All that we wish to say to this new view is, that if 
it were true, we ought to have a large number of our hymns expunged 
from our Hymn-Books, or at least greatly changed, — hymns which 
have warmed the hearts of millions of God's people, such as, " Come, 
Holy Spirit, come," " O heil'ger Geist, kehr bei uns ein," Paul Ger- 
hardt's "O Sacred Head now Wounded," and very many others. Even 
the new Liturgy would have to be toned down in some of its prayers 
in which there are expressions of what the professor calls a " Rational- 
istic decadence," and "error and unbelief" (!). It grieves us in our 
inmost soul, that one of our theological teachers, for whom we have 
ever entertained great respect, and who in former years held entirely 
different views, should be capable of uttering views which, according 
to our convictions, sound rationalizing, — yea, Rationalistic. We see 
plainly enough that the " new theology" has no room in its theory 
for the Holy Spirit in the accepted evangelical sense as held from the 
beginning. But this does not make it any better, but worse a great deal. 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



the question be asked and pondered, Are all 
these men wrong? 

But it may be asked, — 

DOES THE NEW OR MERCERSBURG THEORY TEACH 
A DIFFERENT VIEW ? 

We say decidedly, Yes, it does. 

This follows already as a natural consequence 
from its incarnation theory as the central dogma 
in Christianity. As we have seen, its theory of 
redemption is radically different from that of 
the Reformed Church, in that it is said to con- 
sist in an organic conveyance or transmission 
" of the substance of the glorified humanity of 
Christ" to man. Hence, as this redemption is 
in reality of a physical nature, in some way,— 
physical in the sense that it is not ethical or 
spiritual, — so also the method or means of apply- 
ing to man this redemption must be of the same 
nature. It is not a spiritual operation, not an 
influence exerted upon the soul by the Holy 
Spirit, but a transmission of a substance. It 
follows, hence, that faith, in the sense of the 
Catechism, is set aside, or so eviscerated that 
nothing but the shadow of it is left. According 
to the new theory of Mercersburg and Lan- 
caster, faith is a sort of organ of the soul which 
lays hold of or apprehends the theanthropic 
life of Christ in a real, substantial way. It holds 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



53 



also that there are certain channels or means 
(first of all Baptism) by which this peculiar life 
is transmitted. Such faith, however, is not the 
believing "with the heart unto righteousness," 
and so unto salvation ; not that faith which the 
Apostle (Rom. v. 1-6) holds up in triumph, 
as that which justifies and blesses its possessor 
with such glorious prerogatives. It is not the 
faith of the Protestant Church, and most cer- 
tainly not that of our Heidelberg Catechism* 

What the new theory calls faith is a faith in 
the Church and that which is comprehended in 
all that belongs to it. (Hence some of the friends 
and supporters of that theory frequently say 
that to believe in the Church and to believe in 



* The editor of an Old- School German Lutheran paper (" Gemeinde- 
Blatt") in the West, — the same body, we believe, to which Professor 
Fritschel belongs, who found Dr. Nevin's view on the sacraments 
rather palatable, only that he went still further than these High Church 
Lutherans could go, — in noticing the last conversion of a Reformed 
minister to the Roman Church, says, — 

" We have long been convinced that the views of Nevin in regard 
to the Church {Kirchenthum Nevins) is nothing else than a Roman- 
izing tendency, and that one thing is wanted to make it soundly Lu- 
theran, and that is exactly the principal thing, namely, justification by 
faith alone T These High Church Lutherans cannot but be pleased 
with many things in the new theory of Mercersburg and Lancaster, and 
which these last eagerly lay as a nattering unction to themselves ; but 
when it comes to the main thing, these Lutherans repudiate the new 
theory in the most decided way. And so long as they do this, so 
long as they hold fast by this Reformation truth, they are still soundly 
Protestant and evangelical, however they may out- Luther Luther in 
some other regards. 
5* 



54 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



Christ is the same thing !) A faith in Christ, a 
justifying faith, in the language and the sense 
of the Catechism and the New Testament, is 
therefore ruled out by the new theory. In fact, 
it cannot be otherwise, if the previous positions 
of the incarnation theory and the Mercersburg 
notion of the Church are held. According to 
the new theory, the sinner is justified and saved 
in an entirely different way. We will allow Dr. 
Dorner to corroborate what is here said.* He 
refers in this extract to that part of Dr. Nevin's 
"Vindication" of the Liturgy in which he charges 
his opponents with denying the historical Christ 
of the incarnation, the onward flow of His 
(Christ's) life transmitting itself through Bap- 
tism and the Holy Supper, which he calls the 
spirit of Antichrist, and other very harsh epi- 
thets which we forbear to transcribe. Dr. 
Dorner says, — 

" Underlying this entire statement, there is 
an identification of the Chwch in its actual, his- 



* Dr. I. A. Dorner, one of the most eminent theologians in Ger- 
many, and a professor in the University of Berlin. Dr. Nevin had 
frequently appealed to him as holding similar views in regard to the 
person of Christ, etc. A few years ago Dorner felt constrained to 
publish a lengthy and exhaustive criticism on- Dr. Nevin's theory as 
this is unfolded in the Mercersbui'g Review, the Lihcrgy, etc. This 
criticism, whilst breathing a kind and truly Christian spirit, is a decided 
protest against every fundamental position in the new theory. We 
shall have occasion to refer to some of these criticisms in the sequel. 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



55 



torical manifestation with Christ. Only he be- 
lieves in an objective and historical Christ 
(according to Nevin) who sees in the Church 
not merely the witness of Christ, but the his- 
torically self-unfolding and developing Christ 
Himself ; and only in this sense does there 
remain, in his view, any immediate relation 
between Christ and the believer. That the 
importance of Christ as the Mediator, in and 
of itself, is thus made to stand back of this 
Church, is especially seen in the fact that his 
theory dwells mostly on the mystical communi- 
cation of the life of Christ, on the expansion of 
the theanthropic life, whilst it has little to say 
of justification, but rather allows this to be 
merged* in sanctification. For the Church 
can be thus identified with Christ only by ig- 
noring the work of atonement and justification 
(which rests in the earthly and heavenly high- 
priesthood of Christ) in its important principial 
signification, and by laying the whole weight 
only upon the powers of sanctification which 
are unfolded in the Church, and which are me- 
diated to believers through the Church and her 
organs, and only through them.-j- This will 
become still clearer by the following statement 
of Nevin: 'Where the gospel (he says) is not 
apprehended as the historical (in the Church), 
enduring, objective manifestation of God in the 
flesh, there can be no steady apprehension of 



* Verschwimmen lasst, dissolved. 

f On the importance of distinguishing justification from sanctifica- 
tion, see Appendix C. 



56 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



that which constitutes the proper mystery of it 
in this view, namely, the union there is in it of 
the supernatural with the* natural in an abiding, 
historical (not magical) form. This precisely is 
the true object of an evangelical faith in the 
New Testament sense, the objective power of 
salvation, through the apprehension of which 
only faith becomes justifying and saving' " 

( P . 78). 

After reminding Dr. Nevin that his severe 
accusations against his opponents and other 
denominations for being extremely " subject- 
ive"* is uncalled for, seeing how firmly they 
cling to the grace of God in Christ, to the cruci- 
fied Redeemer, and justification by faith alone 
(all of them clearly revealed, and therefore 
objective truths), he says : 

" He himself moves in a subjectivism of his 
own which deceives itself with a delusive ' ob- 
jectivism.' For where does he get his certainty 
of his idea of the Church, and where are the 
proofs for it ? Arbitrarily and without proper 
judgment he takes for granted as true what the 
Church before the Reformation says of itself, 
whilst he still does not allow that the Papacy is 
a Divine institution ; and yet by rejecting it, to 
be consistent, he ought to reject all that was the 
germ of it. It is easy to see how a person can 
by faith attain to a Divine and joyful assurance 



* Subjective, internal view or feeling, and is opposed to objective, or 
views governed by that which is from without. 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



of his personal salvation, and hence also of 
Christ as his Redeemer, because the power of 
the gospel which he has received testifies of 
itself. But how faith is to attain to any cer- 
tainty from that church-theory is difficult to 
see, unless it be arbitrarily, or by an arbitrary 
surrender to churchly authority." 

Just so. The faith of the new theory is a 
faith in the so-called " objective" powers in the 
" Church." The faith of the gospel, the faith 
as explained in the Heidelberg Catechism, and 
of the whole evangelical Church, is something 
not so exclusively and entirely " objective," but 
also subjective, inward, personal, and experi- 
mental. It is " not only a certain knowledge, 
. . . but also an assured confidence, which the 
Holy Ghost works by the gospel in my heart ; 
that not only to others, but to me also, remission 
of sin, everlasting righteousness, and salvation 
are freely given by God, merely of grace, only 
for the sake of Christ's merits." 

This is where we as Protestants stand ; this 
is where the Reformed Church and her symbol 
stand, and we trust in God will ever stand, — 

" When rolling years shall cease to move." 

And though an angel from heaven should preach 
to us another gospel than this, we cannot, we 
will not believe it, for there is not another 
(Gal. i. 7). 



58 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



ARE MINISTERS OF THE GOSPEL PRIESTS? 

This is a vital question. It is another di- 
viding line between the Church of Rome and the 
Church of the Reformation, including not only 
the Reformed and Lutheran, but also the Church 
of England, and others. The word " priest" is 
supposed to be abbreviated from the word 
"presbyter," which means an elder. In the 
Episcopal Church the term priest \s> indeed used 
in her Prayer Book, but not (as will be shown 
hereafter) in the sense of the Jewish economy. 
The Roman Catholic Church alone employs the 
word in that sense, that is to say, in the sense 
of one who offers sacrifice. By no Protestant 
Church is the term used or recognized except 
when referring to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is 
the only true Priest, with His one altar and 
one sacrifice, " once for all" (time) made on the 
cross. Dr. Thomas Arnold, a clergyman of the 
English (Episcopal) Church, who died in 1842, 
gives the definition of the priest's office in these 
words : " The essential point in the notion of 
a priest is this : that he is a person necessary to 
our intercourse with God, without being neces- 
sary or beneficial to us morally." 

It might be asked, however, whether it is not 
just as proper to have a priesthood, an altar, 
and sacrifices in the Church now as under the 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



59 



Jewish economy. Why not call the ministry a 
priesthood, the Lord's supper a sacrifice, and 
the communion-table an altar ? 

To this it might be replied, in the language 
of the moderate and judicious Dr. Hoff, of the 
Episcopal Church, that " it ought to be reason 
enough for us that we know the inspired writers 
constantly avoid the use of such terms in this 
connection.* The words to express the Jewish 
minister and the Christian, and their acts, are 
always carefully distinguished. "*j~ 

That the terms " priest" and " priesthood" 
were used at an early day in the Christian 
Church is very true. Christian converts from 
the Jewish Church were familiar with those 
terms, and would easily fall into the accustomed 
phraseology, even when not ascribing the origi- 
nal meaning to the terms. "The mistake was 
natural, but the effects were most mischievous." 
In the third and fourth centuries, and onward, 
the Judaizing or legalistic leaven was already at 
work, as the writings of that period clearly 
show. The truth is, the tendency of the human 
mind is, and always has been, to rest in some- 



* "The Christian Ministry not a Priesthood." Baltimore, 1869. 

f I Peter ii. 5, where Christians are called a priesthood,, or a com- 
munity of priests. Dr. Lange, in his commentary on the passage, 
says, " All believers of the New Testament are anointed priests by 
the Holy Ghost.''' 1 Not a particular class of men, therefore. 



60 MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 

thing done or offered by ourselves in order to 
merit salvation. Even in the apostolic period 
there was a tendency in this direction, especially 
on the part of Jewish converts, — a leaning to 
and hankering for outward observances, an 
exalting of the Jewish sacrifices and ceremonials 
to such an extent that " Christ the Crucified" 
was in a measure set aside as the "All and in 
All." Read Galatians, fifth and sixth chapters, 
where Paul calls it "falling from grace" if they 
regarded circumcision and other ceremonials 
and ritualistic observances as things necessary 
to salvation. And this strong language is used 
by the same Paul who, at an earlier period in 
his apostolate, allowed himself to bring offerings 
to the temple, and himself performed the rite 
of circumcision upon Timothy (Acts xvi. 3), by 
way of allaying weak consciences who had not 
yet been able to free themselves from what had 
once been a Divine ordinance, but which had 
no more binding force. (See Appendix F, for 
some remarks by Dr. Neander.) 

In the lapse of time, Christian teachers de- 
parted from the Scriptural mode of speaking on 
this subject. " Christ and His divinely-appointed 
intervention for the reconciliation of man to 
God were more and more obscured by the 
obtrusive services of the earthly priesthood, 
until at last there was need of a special inter- 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



61 



position from above to restore the doctrine." 
This interposition was the Reformation in the 
sixteenth century. 

All the Reformers — German, Swiss, French, 
and English — were of one mind on this subject. 
There was not one dissenting voice among 
them. They all saw clearly that just this very 
doctrine of a mediating human priesthood was 
the foundation of all that is erroneous in the 
Roman Catholic system. That system was the 
slow growth of centuries. But the beginning 
of the system as it now stands, culminating in 
the infallibility of the Pope, rests in the doctrine 
that there is a priesthood ; that there is a class 
of men who stand between sinful man and his 
God for the purpose of mediating the salvation 
of the gospel ; that man can only through the 
priest (of course as the representative of the 
Church) have access to his Maker and obtain 
His favor. 

Now, the Reformers had full knowledge of 
the results of centuries of slavish subjection to 
the priest, claiming to dispense mercy and grace 
by transmitted authority, to the neglect of God's 
written word. 

Let us for a moment look at the religious 
sentiment which prevailed at the time of the 
Reformation, and which still prevails in the 
Roman Church. The "judicious Hooker," in 

6 



62 MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



England, who was accused of being too mode- 
rate in his opposition to Romanism, says in his 
" Ecclesiastical Polity :" 

" The Romanists imagine that when God re- 
mits the eternal punishment of sin He reserves 
torments to be endured for a time shorter or 
longer according to the quality of men's crimes. 
Yet there is a certain contract by virtue of 
which works assigned by the priest shall satisfy 
God touching that punishment. Yet, as they 
cannot assure any man that this will suffice, they 
hold that the soul must remain in unspeakable 
torture until all be paid. Therefore they advise 
men to secure prayers and sacrifices after they 
are gone [the mass]. Hence the infinite pen- 
sions of their priests, the building of so many 
altars and tombs, the enriching of churches, etc. 
But, this done, how far it will avail they are not 
sure. Hence they have invented the idea that 
Christ's merits (over and above what are neces- 
sary for the remission of the eternal penalty), 
and those of the saints through Him, are common 
stock, to which the Pope has the key. Christ 
remits not eternal death without the priest's 
absolution (unless in certain extreme cases), 
and the Pope, as it pleases him, delivers from 
the limited punishment which may remain." 

Let the reader for a moment look at this cor- 
ruption from which the Reformation freed the 
Church. Think of the contrast between such 
a doctrine and that of full and perfect forgive- 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



63 



ness to every one who believes in Jesus ! And 
this is what the gospel teaches. 

But whilst Romanists demand such a high 
claim for priestly intervention, they sometimes 
relax this claim in a manner entirely incon- 
sistent with themselves. Thus, some of their 
doctors teach that " whosoever turneth to God 
with his whole heart hath immediately his sins 
taken away." Now, if they are pardoned of 
God before they come to the priest, how then 
can they say that the priest remits anything? 
Yet when Protestants ascribe the work of 
remission to God, and interpret the priest's 
sentence to be but a solemn declaration of that 
which God Himself has already performed, they 
scorn at it. (Hooker?) 

The Protestant Doctrine. 

Now let us see what the Protestant Church, 
— especially the Reformed branch of it, in the 
narrow sense — teaches on this subject. 

In the 31st Question of the Heidelberg Cate- 
chism, Christ is spoken of as " our only High 
Priest, who by the one sacrifice of His body 
has redeemed us," etc. Nowhere in that excel- 
lent and precious summary of Divine truth does 
the word " priest" or " priesthood" occur in con- 
nection with the Christian ministry, nor is there 
anything like an allusion to the powers and 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



functions of a priest, in the Romish sense, 
according to which the blessing of pardon is 
bound to the act of the priest. We may say 
clearly and emphatically, the New Testament 
Church, the Apostolic Church, and, in accord- 
ance with her, the Protestant Church, has no 
priests and no priesthood. What the Reform- 
ers contended for — every one of them — was 
the universal priesthood of all Christians as 
against the false assumptions of Romanism. 
Rome said, You can only approach to God 
through the priest, who is the Divine agent of 
the Church. No penitence, fio faith, no prayers, 
can avail before God, until you come to the 
confessional, and from that medium, divinely 
appointed and authorized, receive not merely a 
declaration or announcement of pardon on the 
condition of repentance and faith, but that for- 
giveness is actually conveyed and received at the 
moment of pronouncing it. Hence, no matter 
how sincerely penitent an individual may be, his 
sins are not forgiven by God until the priest 
on earth has pronounced that forgiveness over 
him ! 

The evangelical Church holds to no such 
priestly mediating view as this. She has min- 
isters, preachers, bishops (which means shep- 
herds), stewards, messengers, but she has no 
priests ; neither has the New Testament. God 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



65 



has not bound the forgiveness of sins, or any 
other grace, to the official act of a man. The 
passages of Scripture which are adduced by 
the Church of Rome to prove the opposite are 
a monstrous as well as preposterous perversion 
of their meaning. They are Matt. xvi. 19 and 
Matt, xviii. 18. The first is the saying of Christ 
to Peter : " And I will give unto thee the keys 
of the kingdom of heaven : and whatsoever 
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in 
heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on 
earth shall be loosed in heaven." The other 
confers the same power, as the context shows, 
upon all Christians. It is not, therefore, a 
priestly power conferred upon a special class of 
men as ministers. This is usually called the 
" power of the keys;" and the Roman Church, 
and very High Church people elsewhere, wish 
to prove from these passages — what? That 
every preacher is not only a priest, but that he 
also stands on an equality with the Apostles, 
who were miraculously chosen, and endowed 
with extraordinary, miraculous gifts and powers 
of the Holy Ghost in the founding of the 
Christian Church. These miraculous gifts of 
the Holy Spirit, says the able Church historian 
Dr. Ebrard, were necessary for the founding of 
the Church, but not necessary for its further 
continuance, such as the power of the keys, a 

6* E 



66 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



gift peculiar to the Apostles and their immediate 
assistants, exercised in prophetic illumination 
correlative with the special communication of the 
Spirit (John xx. 22), and, therefore, uncondition- 
ally valid and miraculous" (John xx. 23. Com- 
pare Acts v. 5 and 10; 1 Cor. v. 3, etc.). So, 
too, they had the extraordinary gift of " speak- 
ing with tongues," healing the sick, prophecy, 
and raising the dead. It is true, as Ebrard 
also says, that the Apostles did not exclusively 
possess these gifts, but they exclusively were 
able to impart them to others (Acts viii. 15, 16), 
and hence we read of those gifts as being in 
existence in the apostolic period, and in the 
period immediately following, but after that they 
cease. According to the second passage quoted 
(Matt, xviii. 18), it is to be observed that Christ 
accords the power of the keys to all of His dis- 
ciples, and with them to the Church generally, 
" or rather," says Dr. Lange, " to the Church 
along with the disciples." For in verse 17 He 
lays down the rule for the conduct of the Church, 
and verse 18 shows that the Church is warranted 
in this conduct. 

Now let us see what our Catechism teaches 
on this subject. Does it teach that the minister 
has priestly powers lodged in him by virtue of 
his office, to bind or loose, to open or shut the 
kingdom of heaven ? 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



6 7 



"Quest. 83. What are the keys of the king- 
dom of heaven ? 

"Ans. The preaching of the Holy Gospel and 
Christian discipline, or the excommunication 
out of the Christian Church ; by these two the 
kingdom of heaven is opened to believers and 
shut against unbelievers. 

"Quest. 84. How is the kingdom of heaven 
opened and shut by the preaching of the Holy 
Gospel ? 

"Ans. Thus : when, according to the com- 
mand of Christ, it is declared and pttblicly testi- 
fied to all and every believer, that whenever they 
receive the promise of the gospel by a true faith, 
all their sins are really forgiven them of God, 
for the sake of Christ's merits ; and, on the con- 
trary, when it is declared and testified to all 
unbelievers, and such as do not sincerely repent, 
that they stand exposed to the wrath of God 
and eternal condemnation, so long as they are 
unconverted ; according to which testimony of 
the gospel God will judge them, both in this 
and the life to come/' 

And then in the 85th Answer it is explained 
how the kingdom of heaven is shut and opened 
by Christian discipline, declaring that those who 
walk disorderly, and who return not to duty 
after being admonished by the Church, shall be 
forbidden the use of the sacraments, " whereby 
they are excluded from the Christian Church, 
and by God Himself from the kingdom of 
Christ." 



68 MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



No allusion here, nothing that looks like 
"priestly powers," by virtue of which sins are 
remitted or retained by the priest. The " preach- 
ing of the gospel," and the. exercise of " Chris- 
tian discipline," which last is to be exercised 
by the Church, or those " who are thereunto ap- 
pointed by the Church." 

Dr. F. W. Krummacher, who is acknowledged 
as good Reformed authority, and whom our 
Church unanimously called to fill a theological 
professorship in 1843, Dllt which he declined, 
says, in his Sabbath Glocke (Sabbath Chimes), 
on John xx. 22, 23 : 

" God has not given the power of the forgive- 
ness of sin out of His own hand, but has retained 
its absolution to Himself. But I hear some one 
object by saying, ' But does it not say here, 
Whosesoever sins ye remit?' All very true. 
But in the sense of : In the name and by the 
authority of God, after that the Holy Spirit has 
testified that this or that person who seeks the 
forgiveness of his sins is in such a state of 
mind, upon whom God, according to His word, 
will seal forgiveness unto him. To a spiritually 
dead preacher God gives no such prerogative. 
A stranger to his own heart, he is totally dis- 
qualified to judge the innermost state of others. 
What would it amount to, though he should say 
ten or a hundred times, Thy sins are remitted 
or not remitted ? His words would drive to the 
four winds of heaven without meaning and 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. fig 

without effect, because it is without the higher 
sanction. In the kingdom of Christ, which is 
a kingdom of the Holy Ghost, things do not 
proceed in this mechanical style, but all His 
operations proceed through well-chosen organs. 
The naked office in such case is not the channel 
of Divine powers. It is through sanctified per- 
sonalities that the water of life flows. Just 
suppose, on the one hand, an unenlightened, un- 
holy, and God-forsaken bishop, and on the other 
hand a private' Christian or layman like the 
godly Tersteegen, or Jung-Stilling, or Baron von 
Kottwitz,* — to whom among these would you 
believe yourselves directed by God if you felt 
the need of some human counsel or instruction, 
when seeking the consolations of the grace of 
God for your souls ? You would not require 
time for consideration, but as with one voice 
you would say most decidedly, that the Ananias 
that you would seek should be one of the three 
last-named persons. I should do the same, and 
would allow the first-named, notwithstanding his 
high-sounding title and official dignity, to stand 
aside. For it remains forever true that the 
authority to forgive and retain sin is not an 
exclusive authority which is bound to the office, 
but is an authority of the Spirit, which is not a 
prerogative only of the ministerial vocation, but 
to those of the universal priesthood of believers. 
That pastor who is born of God possesses it, 
and will exercise it in his churchly forms. But 
no less he, though he may be among the lowly 



* Well-known and devout laymen and authors in Germany. — S. 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



members of the congregation, if there has been 
given him the gift of ' discerning the spirits,' 
and he exercises that gift in his humble way 
with equal authority and with equal effect."* 

As this is a vital question to us as Protes- 
tants, inasmuch as the whole Romish system is 
founded upon their sacerdotal priesthood, culmi- 
nating in the powers of the Pope, and latterly 
of Papal Infallibility, which last is but the pin- 
nacle to the whole structure, let us consult a 
few more authorities, — authorities not merely 
of representative men, but official Reformed 
Church authorities, to which, as ministers and 
members, we are obliged to pay deference. 

The Second Helvetic (Swiss) Confession 
stands among the very first of the standards 
of the Reformed Church, and alongside of the 
Heidelberg Catechism itself. The great and 
good Bullinger drew it up. It has the signa- 

* It should perhaps be remarked that Krummacher guards himself 
well in all he says, and hence we read in preceding paragraphs : " The 
Evangelical ministry is an ordinance of God, which has great prom- 
ises. But the office does not impart to him who is clothed with it a 
mediating function in any sense between Christ and the Church. . . . 
In the next place, the office, which seeks the man but does not make 
him, imparts to its bearer none of those independent Divine powers 
apart from his personal spiritual state so far as regards the qualifica- 
tion to minister in the things of the Spirit effectively. By this it is not 
denied that in the Church certain churchly offices maybe firmly bound 
to the office, and that the Sacraments, for instance, as well as lessei 
services, still remain what they are, even though an unworthy ministei 
should administer them." 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



71 



tures of approbation by delegates from the 
Churches of England, Germany, Switzerland, 
Scotland, France, Holland, Poland, and Hun- 
gary. Its date is 1 566, three years after the 
Heidelberg Catechism was published. The pious 
Elector Frederick the Third specially requested 
Bullinger to publish this Confession of Faith, so 
well was he pleased with it, and gave as a 
reason for the request, that it would go to prove 
that it was in accord with the Heidelberg Cate- 
chism, and hence would show the agreement 
which existed in different countries in regard to 
Reformed doctrines. 

Now, what does it teach on the Universal 
Priesthood of Believers ? 

"All (Christians) are indeed by the Apostle 
called priests (ye are kings and priests unto 
God), but not in respect to their office, but 
because all believers through Christ can, as 
kings and priests, bring spiritual sacrifices to 
God." Again: "The priesthood and ministry 
are very different from each other. The former 
(the priesthood) is common to all Christians, as 
already said : the latter is not so. . . . For the 
new covenant there is no more, as in the old, a 
priesthood which has an external anointing, 
holy vestments, and manifold ceremonies, which 
were once types of Christ. All these things 
hath He abolished by His coming, the types 
being fulfilled. He alone remains Priest to all 
eternity ; and in order that we may not detract 



72 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



from Him anything, we do not give the name 
priest to any minister in the Church." 

" Of the Confession of Sin. We heartily 
approve of the general open confession of sin 
in the Church ; . . . for it agrees with Scripture. 

" Of the Power and Duty of the Ministry. 
Concerning thejr power, some have very zeal- 
ously contended and wished to subordinate 
everything on earth to their control ; yet con- 
trary to the command of the Lord, who forbids 
all lordship to His followers, and rather com- 
mands humility. 

" Of the Office of the Keys. Concerning 
the keys of the kingdom of heaven, which by 
the Lord were committed to the Apostles, aston- 
ishing things have been spoken, and out of them 
have been forged swords, lances, sceptres, and 
crowns ; and full power over the greatest em- 
pires, yea, even over souls and bodies, has been 
drawn from it. . . . All properly-called preach- 
ers have and exercise the keys of the kingdom 
of heaven when they proclaim the gospel, namely, 
when they teach, exhort, comfort, admonish, and 
keep in discipline the people entrusted to their 
fidelity. . . . They therefore use these keys 
when they preach repentance and faith. Thus 
do they reconcile us to God. Thus do they remit 
sin, and thus unlock the kingdom of heaven and 
lead believers into it." 

This language speaks for itself. No priest- 
hood in the Romish sense ; no private confes- 
sional ; no priestly absolution ; but, on the con- 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



trary, a most decided protest against any and 
every thing of the sort. 

Luther s View. Let us now give attention to 
only a few out of numerous expressions from 
this genial, outspoken German Reformer : 

" Those who preside over the people in the 
Word and Sacraments may and shall not be 
called priests. That they are so called, how- 
ever, is either done in heathen fashion, or is a 
remnant of the Jews' laws, and afterwards was 
accepted with great damage to the Church. 
But according to the evangelical Scriptures 
they had better be called ministers (servants), 
deacons, bishops, stewards, or presbyters." 

Dr. Nitzsch, the Patriarch of Evangelical 
Protestantism in Germany, as he has been 
called, in his reply to the able but sophistical 
Roman Catholic, Moehler, after stating that 
Christ gave gifts to Apostles, Evangelists, 
Prophets, etc., in the founding of His Church, 
adds : 

" But that in or by the side of them he placed 
priests, we do not find." 

He then proceeds to explain the heaven-wide 
difference between the ministry in the gospel 
sense and the priesthood in the Romish sense, 
and sa^s that the Apostle Peter saw the priest- 
hood (in the New Testament sense) in the con- 
gregation, in the believers, as such, and then 
7 



74 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



quotes with approbation the declaration of an- 
other, " that in the New Testament there is no 
priesthood of this sort" (in the sacerdotal or 
Roman Catholic sense). 

Dr. Ebrard, an eminent living theologian 
a 1 so, and Reformed, the author of numerous 
works, has in certain quarters been quoted 
as favoring certain views which (he says) he 
does not hold. Here is what he says on the 
subject before us : 

" The minister is only one of the congrega- 
tion, himself a sinner, who needs forgiveness 
and sanctification, and this in itself cuts off a 
particular priesthood. For the sake of order, 
and by Christ's appointment, there is an office 
of the ministry, but no priesthood. . . . When 
the minister leads in prayer, he does not pray 
as a priest for the congregation, but as a pastor 
with them!" 

And thus we might go on quoting page after 
page from scores of Reformed, Lutheran, and 
Evangelical (the United) Church of Germany, 
France, Holland, and Switzerland, — from Pal- 
mer, Tholuck, Julius Miiller, Schroder, Von 
Hoffmann, the Gerlachs, and their like. But it 
is needless. The voice of the Protestant 
Church for three hundred and fifty years is 
unanimous on this point. It has ever been 
held that just this subject of the priesthood 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



75 



was the starting-point of the gradual divergence 
from the simplicity of the gospel of Christ, car- 
rying with it the manifold human devices and 
producing the fearful corruptions of the Roman 
Church. This has ever been admitted by some 
theologians of the milder or more moderate 
type in this Church, such as* Bishop Sailer and 
others. 



WHAT DOES THE MERCERSBURG-LANCASTER 
THEOLOGY TEACH ? 

Having thus shown what the Roman Catho- 
lics teach in regard to the priesthood, and then 
proved from the Catechism, and similar Re- 
formed Confessions, and the best representative 
men of the evangelical Church, that the Prot- 
estant Church from the start held an entirely 
different view, grounded upon the unadulter- 
ated word of God, we shall now attempt to 
show — ■ 

That the new theory taught at Mercersburg 
and Lancaster differs widely and essentially 
from the Reformed doctrine, and from the 
doctrine of the general Protestant Church. 

It is not in a spirit of self-sufficiency, much 
less with a desire to find fault needlessly, that 
this task is undertaken. Would to God there 
were no cause for such unwelcome task ! 



7 6 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



Firmly and conscientiously believing that there 
is such cause, we venture to perform the task, 
in this as in the preceding points. 

We say, then, that the new theory has taught 
and is teaching in the Mercersburg Review, in 
the Order of Worship (the Liturgy), in the Mes- 
senger, as well as in other ways, views on the 
priesthood which are greatly at variance with 
the universal doctrines of evangelical Protes- 
tantism, and therefore at variance also with the 
standards and faith of the Reformed Church. 
These new teachings coincide with a small 
fraction of ultra-Lutherans in Germany, and 
with the Puseyite or High Church party in the 
English (Episcopal) Church, whose views, again, 
trench so closely on Roman Catholic ground 
that the division-line is hardly perceptible. 

Let us then specify more particularly, by way 
of answering the question, What does Mercers- 
burg-Lancaster teach on the subject in hand ? 

We reply, it teaches that — 

" The Church is the actual body of Christ, 
and those who do not realize that, as His body, 
it possesses all the authority which of right 
belongs to Him, of course do not realize their 
duty to be obedient unto the Church as unto 
Christ. They are unable to comprehend that 
in the Church are now lodged the prerogative 
of teaching, the priestly functions of the Saviour, 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY, 



77 



and also His kingly functions, and must continue 
there in virtue of His appointment." 

This extract is from the Report on the State 
of Religion adopted by the Synod in Danville, 
held in 1869. It was drawn up by its chairman, 
the Rev. Geo. D. Wolff, who has since become 
a convert to Rome. The Synod, by the adop- 
tion of that report, made it its own in an official 
way. We will yet remark that the foregoing 
extract is introduced in these words : 

"The spirit of infidelity afflicts many members 
of our Church, and thus weakens and hinders 
her. . . . This spirit of unbelief is associated 
with a spirit of insubordination." 

And then, after the extract before given, the 
following harsh words follow : 

" Hence these deluded though often sincere 
persons imagine that they are right in making 
their own judgments a law to themselves ; and 
they frequently rebel against the authority of 
those who, by Divine, not human appointment, 
have the rule over them, not understanding that 
in so doing they are resisting lawful authority, 
rending the ' body of Christ,' breaking the unity 
of the Spirit, and following him who is the Anti- 
christ, ' the father of lies.' " 

Let any one now compare these extracts in 
regard to " priestly functions" and what is falsely 
called " Scriptural truth" in reference to the 

7* 



78 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



Church possessing all the authority which be- 
longs to Christ, and then say if such a view of 
the priesthood and Church authority is a whit 
behind that of the Roman Church. And then, 
too, the arrogant and denunciatory way in which 
all this is spoken savors of the very essence of 
a Pope's fulmination. Those who hold, as we 
have seen, to the Reformed view, to Protestant 
doctrine, to gospel teaching, are charged with 
the " spirit of infidelity," are said to be "deluded," 
make their own judgments a law to themselves, 
rebel against lawful authority because they 
obey not the authority of what is called Divine 
appointment, designate the Church as repre- 
sented by the Synod the " actual body of Christ," 
and charge those who do not believe this with 
breaking the unity of the Spirit and " following 
him who is the Antichrist, the father of lies !" 
Verily, Dr. Dorner is right when he says in his 
criticism of the new theory, of which the fore- 
going is an advanced specimen, that such arbi- 
trary heaping of all Church powers upon the 
ministerial office, and thus robbing the laity of 
their proper rights, " sets eveiy minister higher . 
than the Church of Rome sets her bishops!' In an 
article from the pen of Dr. Gerhart in the Mer- 
cersburg Review for October, 1 867, he says of the 
prevailing evangelical system, — 

"This system admits that the minister is a 



MER CERSB UR G THEOL OGY. 



79 



teacher of Divine truth, and in some sense a 
ruler, but denies that he is a priest, nor does he 
perform any functions which are Divine acts. 
The success of his labors depends entirely upon 
the degree of his faith and piety, his talents and 
scholarship, his eloquence and tact, and upon 
the measure of heavenly blessings with which 
God may favor his preaching of the gospel, but 
not on the Divine powers of his office, nor on 
his authority to administer the sacraments and 
to remit or retain sin in the sense of Christ's 
words (John xx. 23)." [Appendix D.] 

In the same way Dr. Nevin, in his pamphlet 
on the liturgical question, defends the unusual 
and un-Reformed language in the ordination 
service in the Liturgy, where the office is in- 
vested with the character of a sacrament " flow- 
ing directly from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself 
as the fruit of His resurrection and triumphant 
ascension into heaven, and being designed by 
Him to carry forward the purpose of His grace 
07i earth in the salvatio7z of men by the Church to 
the end of time." In the ordination service we 
read, — 

" The first ministers were apostles who were 
called and commissioned immediately by Christ 
Himself. They, in turn, ordained . . . other 
suitable men as pastors, . . . and these again 
in the same way appointed others to carry on- 
ward and forward still the true succession of 
this office ; which, being regularly transmitted in 



So 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



this way from age to age in the Christian Church, 
has come down finally to our time. The solem- 
nity of ordination, through which this transmis- 
sion flows, is not merely an impressive ceremony, 
. . . but it is to be considered rather as their 
actual invest ihire with the very power of the office 
itself the sacramental seal of their heavenly com- 
mission, and a symbolical assurance from on high 
that their consecration to the service of Christ 
is accepted, and that the Holy Ghost will most 
certainly be with them in the faithful discharge 
of their official labors. They are appointed to 
. . . offer 2tp before Him the prayers of His 
people. . . . They are also charged with the 
government of the Church, and with the proper 
use of its discipline in the way of censure and 
absolution according to that awfully mysterious 
word in Matt. xvi. 18." [Nothing is said of 
elders, only they, the ministers.] 

In the same service the minister before ordi- 
nation is asked, — 

" Are you truly persuaded in your heart that 
you are called of God to the office of the holy 
ministry, and do you desire and expect to re- 
ceive, through the laying on of our hands, - the 
gifts and grace of the Holy Ghost, which shall 
enable you to fulfill this heavenly commission 
and trust?" 

This is sufficiently plain, surely. "Through 
the laying on of our hands the gifts and grace of 
the Holy Ghost" are received by him who is to 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. gl 

be ordained. We have, we think, in preceding- 
pages given the proof that the evangelical Prot- 
estant Church knows nothing and will know 
nothing of such mechanism. And as for the 
ordinary gifts and grac^ of the Holy Spirit, we 
hold again, with the Protestant Church, that if 
the person to be ordained does not possess 
these before he is ordained he will not possess 
them afterwards. Ordination is not a channel 
for the giving or imparting of supernatural and 
magical powers, but a confirmation (Bestatigung) 
of the call to the ministerial office. All the Re- 
formed Confessions which touch upon the sub- 
ject teach nothing else. The words of the first 
Helvetic Confession, as it is the briefest, may 
stand here as an example. After stating that 
this office should not be intrusted to any that 
are not found by the proper authorities to be 
well acquainted with the word of God and to 
be of a pure life and full of zeal for the cause 
and honor of Christ, it adds, — 

" Since this is a real Divine call, it is of right 
confirmed by the Church (Gemeine), by the lay- 
ing on of hands of a minister." 

To say that this view of the ministerial office 
would bring the Church down to the level of a 
" temperance society" is a monstrous perversion, 
and only confirms the language of the learned 

F 



82 MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



Dr. Dorner, that "unless we are willing to 
adopt Romish tenets we must be content to 

hold that the organic communion which flows 

<_> 

from Christ cannot be dependent upon the out- 
ward rite of a sacramental ordination, and does 
not first receive from that its reality and his- 
torical character." 

" It will hardly be denied," says the same Dr. 
Dorner, " that these tenets on ordination go 
far beyond the bounds of those which'are evan- 
gelical, and must lead to the Hierarchical" (the 
High Church or else the Romish system). 

This theory of the special priesthood, in the 
nature of the case, affects more or less every 
theological point brought out in the Liturgy ; and 
it was intended to do so. 

Take the form of Confirmation, for instance. 
Although it is well known that confirmation was 
not in use for a long time after the Reformation, 
neither by Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, nor their 
successors, yet it has for at least two centuries 
been found a wise and wholesome method, when 
properly guarded, of receiving persons into full 
communion with the Church. But the form of 
confirmation in the new Liturgy foists into that 
service an entirely new view. It describes it 
as the completion of baptism (pp. 203 and 206), 
"just as the Romish Church does," says Dor- 
ner, "at the expense of baptism, as if the 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



83 



Apostles had 'confirmed by laying on of hands' 
all the adults whom they baptized." (See Ap- 
pendix E.) 

CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. 

The peculiar priestly theory comes, as a matter 
of course, into view on confession and absolution. 
The wording of it (p. 10) might be allowed to 
stand, but, taking it in connection with the theory 
of the priesthood as held and as it must be 
held to rule here with the new theory, it follows 
that the remission of sin is bound to the formal 
pronouncement of it by the priest When Dr. 
Dorner referred to this point by saying that 
forgiveness of sin in the view of Dr. Nevin 
was " bound to the outward organization and 
forms of the Church," and that therefore "this 
cardinal point cuts off individual Christians from 
direct communication with God by introducing 
a new priesthood," Dr. Nevin, in a harsh and — 
we cannot help saying— most sophistical way, 
defends the position, and charges those who 
hold a different view with regarding the Church 
as nothing more nor higher than a " civil corpo- 
ration." But this is not correct. The charge 
is aimed at an imaginary opponent, in the Re- 
formed Church at least, and in fact in all evan- 
gelical Churches. How is it, we may ask ? do 
ministers of the Reformed, the Presbyterian, 



8 4 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



the Lutheran, the Episcopal denominations — do 
Dr. Dorner, Prof. J. H. Klein, Dr. Hodge, Dr. 
W. A. Muhlenberg, Dr. Sprecher — " blaspheme 
the gospel," and are they " infidels," as it is said 
those are who do not hold these high-priestly 
views in regard to the functions of the Church 
and her ministers ? And because they do not 
believe this, must they therefore be read out of 
the pale of Christ's Church and handed over 
to Satan ? Because they believe, with evangelical 
Christendom, that the theory of a specific priest- 
hood is a falsehood, do they therefore deserve 
the charge of believing the Church to be nothing 
higher than an Odd-Fellows' lodge or a tem- 
perance society, as our ears are accustomed to 
hear from every zealous advocate of the new 
theory until the people tire of the threadbare 
formulary ? 

Dr. Nevin asks (Vindic, p. 83), when the min- 
ister says that by the authority and in the name 
of Christ " your sins are forgiven you," whether 
this implies " that the minister himself pretends 
to forgive sins;" and then calls this "spiritual- 
istic prudery of the most captious sort." 

But we are not aware that such a charge has 
ever been made in this form. The Romish 
priest, nay, the immaculate and infallible Pope 
of Rome himself, does not pretend to forgive 
sin by his own authority. But the charge is 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



35 



this, that by virtue of the Divine powers vested 
in and conferred upon the minister (priest), it 
is claimed that there can be no assurance of the 
pardon of sin, unless it is declared and pronounced 
by a minister {priest). That is the point. And 
we say that is just what the evangelical Church 
of all times and in all countries has denied, and 
on account of which thousands have been put 
to the rack, into prisons, and to the stake. (See 
Appendix F.) 

To show still more clearly the direct, unmis- 
takable teachings of the new-theory brethren 
on this subject, read the following: 

" A sinner may be penitent for his sins, but 
until he has received baptism, as God's act of 
remission to him, he has no true assurance of 
remission ; and when, after baptism, he sins 
through infirmity, he cannot be sure of pardon 
till his absolution is spoken, signed, and sealed 
by Christ, by means of a Divine act, through the 
Church." [Mercers burg Review, 1868, p. 31.) 

And the following in the Messenger, by one of 
the regular official contributors to that paper, ac- 
knowledged to be Dr. D. Gans (May 1 5, 1872) : 

"That the power to absolve from sin was 
given to the Apostles, there are few who will 
call in question. ... It was a great power, but 
it rested on a great gift, even the sovereign and 
infallible guidance of the Holy Ghost. 

8 



86 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



" As forming a part of the gospel of our Lord, 
this power necessarily descends in the Church 
from age to age. [This is assertion, but not 
proof] .... Every true minister now . . . 
must possess the same authority. . . . How 
does this differ from the office of absolution 
. . . ? In the way of principle there is no 
difference. 

" Why should any hesitate to believe all this, 
if one can steadily acknowledge the fact that the 
Holy Spirit is abidingly in the Church ? Surely 
He is as competent now to qualify His ministers 
for the proper discharge of this duty as He was 
when first given." 

OF PURGATORY. 

It would not be fair to charge the believers 
of the new theory that they hold to or teach 
purgatory ; and yet from the way in which some 
of them speak and write on the subject it is easy 
to see that there is some uncertainty in their 
minds about the subject. Thus, we read in the 
Me7 r cersburg Review \ vol. iv. p. 204 : 

" It is perfectly plain that the article of purga- 
tory, so far as the primary conception of it is 
concerned, was in full vogue in the days of 
Augustine and Chrysostom ; and that the faith 
of that period was accordingly in full contradic- 
tion here, as well as at other points not a few, 
to the whole system of modern Protestantism, 
whether Anglican or Puritan." 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



That is all so ; but does this not rather go to 
show how deep the corruption in that period 
already was, and how unsafe it is, therefore, to 
refer so confidently to the " fathers" on all 
points ? And when we know from some funeral 
addresses, as we do know, how darkly, shadowy, 
and murkily some of our brethren represent the 
state even of the " pious dead," it is enough to 
cast a gloom over the mind, and to cause us 
to ask, Are the blessed ones, then, doomed to 
wander up and down for ages in this gloomy 
future? No; purgatory is not taught, at least 
has not been ; but such a passage as the fore- 
going has some significance. 

Another uncertain sound. In vol. iii. p. 394 it 
is said, — 

" To some it may seem, possibly, that putting 
the matter in this form is equivalent to a full 
surrender of the Church question in favor of 
Rome. If it were so, we ought not to shrink, 
certainly, from the confession of clear and open 
truth, just for the sake of avoiding that conse- 
quence." 

Suppose I should say, Putting the matter 
thus and so might seem to imply that I am 
ready to surrender the question in favor of 
Mormonism ; and I should then ward off the 
opponent by saying, Well, if it does lead you 
to embrace that system, you ought not to shrink 



88 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



from the confession of clear and open truth, no 
matter about the consequence. 

Certainly not, if it is the truth, God's revealed 
truth. But the very fact that I can speak in 
this hypothetical way is proof clear as sunlight, 
either that objective truth is not yet clearly 
seen and apprehended by myself, or (what is 
still worse) that I am insinuating my own notions 
into the mind of another for the purpose of 
driving out of his mind his belief, — a belief 
which to him is perhaps his joy and bliss, — and 
yet I give him no assurance of anything that is 
better, nay, only leave him in doubt. Is this 
not cruel ? 

So, too, Calvin (of whom even Lutheran the- 
ologians of Germany speak with the highest 
veneration), Zwingle, and other worthies of the 
Reformation period, are frequently spoken of in 
terms of reproach for holding certain doctrinal 
positions which do not square with the " subject- 
ivism" of the men of the new theory, whilst a 
Moehler and other Romish authors are lauded 
in terms that cannot fail to tell us, These are 
the men for us ! 

Dr. Nevin speaks of Moehler thus : " One 
man like the learned and pious Moehler, now 
with God, who knows how to admit the his- 
torical significance of the Reformation," etc., 
and then passes on to a wholesale detraction of 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



8 9 



Protestant defenders. We have nothing to say 
against that artful Roman champion ; but when 
we see such a one thus carefully lauded, whilst 
Calvin and other greater and better men are 
treated with sneers, as some of the younger 
class of the theorists are doing, we cannot fail 
to see that " straws show which way the wind 
blows." And when we hear some of these same 
brethren say that they called to see the Romish 
bishop , of , whose company they en- 
joyed so very much, whilst they fail to pay even 
their compliments to brethren of their own com- 
munion in the same place, especially if they are 
known to hold the " old views," are these not 
signs of some significance ? 

ALTAR AND SACRIFICE. 

Where there is a priest and a priesthood in 
the sense of the Roman Catholic Church, there 
must, as a necessary consequence, be an altar 
and victim, or a sacrifice. These are inseparable. 
They are joined together and cannot be sun- 
dered. Take one of these away, no matter which, 
and you take all three away. If the Christian 
Church has priests in the sacerdotal sense, then 
she must have a victim, something to be offered 
as a sacrifice in that sense. And if she has such 
a sacrifice, as the Romish Church has in the 
mass, then she must have an altar in that sense. 

8* 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



But we have shown, we think, by irrefragable 
evidence that the Reformed Church, yea, the 
evangelical Protestant Church at large, acknowl- 
edges no such priesthood. Christ is her only 
Priest, and, at the same time, her only Sacrifice. 
And hence she also acknowledges no altar in 
any priestly or sacerdotal sense. The Romish 
Church is consistent in having all three, because 
she holds to the mass, the so-called " unbloody 
sacrifice," in her service. It is with her the 
" holy of holies," the innermost sanctuary, and 
in her altars are deposited her sacred vessels, 
etc., as emblematic of this. Hence, when the 
priest engages in the services of the mass and 
in certain prayers, he turns his back to the 
people, thus facing the altar, which is for him 
the inner sanctuary, and makes adoration to it 
by bowing and crossing himself when approach- 
ing or passing it. The altar was generally ele- 
vated from the ground-floor; hence the name 
alta ara, " an elevated place." 

In this sacerdotal sense, as applied to the 
new or Christian dispensation, the name never 
occurs. It is used only figuratively, spiritually, 
or by way of accommodation. Altars were 
usually built of stone. That of the Jewish 
Tabernacle was called the " brazen altar," and 
it, as well as the other vessels, seems to have 
been made chiefly of metal. Everything about 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



91 



it, as indeed all the Old Testament ceremonial 
worship, was a type and symbol of the future 
New Testament sacrifice, of which it was a 
significant prefiguration. Thus, the daily offer- 
ings of animal sacrifices on the altar, the smoke 
of the burning flesh, the dark cloud mounting up 
toward heaven, were, as Dr. J. W. Nevin says in 
his Biblical Antiquities, — 

" A continual remembrance of sin, displaying 
in lively representation its awful guilt and the 
consuming wrath of heaven which it deserves. 
. . . 'This Brazen Altar,' to use the words 
of a learned and holy man, ' was a type of 
Christ dying to make atonement for our sins.' 
The zvood (the inside lining) would have been 
consumed by the fire from heaven, if it had not 
been secured by the brass ; nor could the human 
nature of Christ have borne the wrath of God 
if it had not been supported by a Divine power. 
Christ sanctified Himself for His Church as 
their Altar (John xvii. 19), and by His media- 
tion sanctifies the daily services of His people, 
who also have a right to ' eat at this Altar' 
(Heb. xiii. 10), for they serve at it as spiritual 
priests. To the horns of this Altar (Lev. iv. 
30, xvi. 18) poor sinners fly for refuge when 
justice pursues them, and there they are safe in 
the virtue of the sacrifice there offered. . . . 
The washing of the body, in the outward service 
of the ancient sanctuary, was intended to teach 
the necessity of inward purity in all who would 
draw near to Him in spirit and in truth (Psalm 



9 2 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



xxvi. 6, lxvi. 1 8). Thus the Apostle exhorts 
believers to draw near to God with a true 
heart, in full assurance of faith, having 'their 
hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and 
their bodies washed with pure water' (Heb. 
x. 22). So we need to be washed every day, 
and are required every day to come with re- 
pentance and faith to Christ, that we may be 
cleansed, and so fitted to come before the Lord 
with an acceptable service (James iv. 8 ; 1 John 
i. 7-10). More especially the laver, moreover, 
was a continual sign that the nature of man had 
become polluted, and that until the pollution 
was entirely taken away it could find no en- 
trance into heaven. As on the altar the eye of 
faith might behold, as it were, this inscription, 
Without shedding of blood there is no remissio7t, 
so also it might read upon the laver, Without 
holiness 110 man shall see the Lord. It is not 
enough that sacrifice and atonement are made 
for sin so as to satisfy the law ; the soul needs 
at the same time to be delivered from its deep- 
rooted power, to be washed from its dark-colored 
stain, to be sanctified as well as justified, and so 
made meet for the inheritance of the saints in 
light. A laver, therefore, as well as an altar, 
was planted out before the tabernacle, and it 
stood between the altar and the sanctuary, show- 
ing that pardon through the Great Sacrifice is 
the first benefit which the believer receives, and 
that this is followed by the complete sanctifica- 
tion of his nature before he passes into the 
house not made with hands on high. ... It 
gave assurance at the same time that this great 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



93 



purification was not an object of despair, as it 
must have been if left to man to accomplish by 
his own power, but that the grace of God had 
made provision for it altogether sufficient and 
sure, that a fountain for the uncleanness of sin 
was wonderfully secured by the same love that 
procured redemption from its guilt, in which the 
soul might be made as white as if it had never 
been defiled with the smallest stain (Eph. v. 26, 
27; Rev. i. 5, vii. 14)." — Biblical Antiquities, 
pp. 264-66. 

We have purposely given the foregoing quo- 
tations at length, because they show us in the 
clearest light and in very apt language the 
purport and deeply-spiritual meaning of the 
symbolical and figurative terms which are em- 
ployed in the Old Testament service. The 
whole of it is a grand, deeply-instructive cere- 
monial, " a shadow of good things to come," but 
which, having their fulfillment in Christ, "are 
passed away." Christ, therefore, is now the 
true, the only altar to the Christian ; the " bra- 
zen altar" is needed no more to point to Him. 
He is here Himself. No external altar at 
Jerusalem or on Gerizim is now needed for the 
worshiper to approach unto, — so taught the 
Saviour Himself, — for they that worship Him 
worship Him in spirit and in truth. The Chris- 
tian's altar, according to the passage quoted by 
Dr. Nevin in the passage above (Heb. xiii. 10), 



MERCERS BURG THEOLOGY. 



is Christ Himself, whereof they have not the 
privilege to eat who serve in the tabernacle. 

This might be sufficient to satisfy us that the 
term altar is now an inappropriate term in con- 
nection with New Testament worship. In any 
proper, in the Christian or New Testament sense, 
there is no altar save as applied to the Lord 
Jesus Christ Himself. The exposition of Dr. 
Nevin, given in the foregoing quotations, is the 
undoubted true gospel sense, the sense of the 
early Church, the sense of the evangelical 
Church of Protestantism. The name altar was, 
it is true, retained by Luther, but without the 
Jewish or Roman Catholic idea connected with 
it. And as Protestants worshiped in a number 
of churches in Europe which were built in the 
middle ages with the regular altar-form in them, 
they continued to call it so, and also called 
the Lord's Supper the sacrament of the altar. 
But it was a misnomer. Luther repudiated, as 
we have seen, the priesthood in the Jewish and 
Romish sense with all his soul, and so also the 
term altar in its priestly and sacerdotal sense. 
The " sacrament of the altar," in proper lan- 
guage, means a priestly sacrifice in the Jewish 
or Roman Catholic sense, and nothing else. 
The Reformed Church, from the start, more 
free and unfettered than the Lutheran, refused 
to allow the term altar to be used, on account, 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



in a great measure, of the shameful abuses con- 
nected with it. And hence they at once restored 
the apostolical terms, " The Table of the Lord," 
" The Lord's Table," " The Supper of the Lord," 
etc. And it is very significant that in no one of 
the numerous confessional writings is this term 
ever used. It was designedly discarded. 

THE REFORMED VIEW. 

The Heidelberg Catechism does not contain 
the word altar, in the sense referred to, from be- 
ginning to end. In treating of the Eucharist it 
calls it the " Lord's Supper," the " Bread and Cup 
of the Lord," but nowhere does it speak of it as 
the " altar." There is a wise and Scriptural 
avoidance of any expression which" by possibility 
could lead to the idea underlying that term. 

Out of a number of Reformed Confessions, we 
shall quote only the following, to show why altars 
were discarded in the Reformed Churches : 

Confession of Nassati (a.d. 1559): "And as 
we, as Christians, have, properly speaking, in 
the New Testament neither altar nor sacrifice as 
under the law of Moses ; and the Papists have 
again introduced the altars from the old Leviti- 
cal Priesthood, and only for this reason, because 
out of the Lord's Supper they have made the 
sacrifice of the mass. . . Therefore such entirely 
idolatrous altars have been removed, and in their 
stead proper tables, covered with cloth, are 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



placed in the churches and used for the com- 
munion. In some places the altars of stone 
have been remodeled so as to be like tables." 
And again : 

"It is certain from the history of the Church 
that altars were introduced long after the time 
of Constantine [in the fourth century]. From 
this it follows that the Church of God, from the 
Apostles' time down to the time of Constan- 
tine, made no use of altars in the administration 
of the Holy Sacraments, but only of tables. So 
also Christ in the first institution of the Supper. 
Hence the Apostle speaks, not of the altar, 
but of the Lord's Table." 

Bremen Confession : "In the first and oldest 
churches there were for hundreds of years no 
altars in use, because the Old Covenant had 
ceased, and altars do not belong to the public 
worship of the New Covenant, after the fulfill- 
ment of the sacrifice of Christ, made through 
His death upon the cross. But when, under 
the Papacy, they made out of the Supper a pro- 
pitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead, 
then they also introduced in a perverting man- 
ner the altar into the churches. And as in the 
mass they invoked the departed saints, so they 
also filled the altars with many sacred things 
and idolatrous pictures. They also held that 
the Supper could not be rightly administered, 
unless from a consecrated altar. And hence 
the name has remained, although it would be 
much more appropriate to call it, with the 
Apostle, the Table of the Lord. . . . Many of the 
Evangelical Churches, for the purpose of mani- 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



97 



festing their earnest dislike of the papistic 
abominations connected with the sacrifice of the 1 
mass and invocation of saints, have entirely abol- 
ished the altars, and instead thereof make use 
of suitable tables, covered with a cloth, which 
are allowed constantly to remain in one place, 
from which the Supper is distributed. But if 
the fabulous holy things and idolatrous pictures 
have been removed, and the abomination of the 
mass has given place to the true doctrine and 
appropriate use of the Holy Supper, we allow 
it, from want of a better opportunity, to be a 
part of Christian liberty that, after doing away 
with the idolatrous practices, use be made of 
the masonry of the altars in the churches, as of 
a table of stone; and we regard it as useful for 
the edifying of God's Church, that in place of 
the wings which formerly were at the altar, 
hereafter the principal part of the Catechism 
be engraved in good readable letters and placed 
before their eyes ; but, whether it be a table of 
stone or wood from which the Holy Sacrament 
be dispensed, it is always proper that the min- 
ister should turn, not his back, but always his 
face toward the people* in order that the whole 



* It is significant and worthy of note that some of the more ardent 
friends of the Mercersburg theology have already begun to imitate the 
custom here condemned, by turning their back to the people in per- 
forming certain portions of the liturgical service. The writer was 
witness himself of such a performance in a Reformed congregation, 
when two of our professors stood, one on the right, the other on the 
left side of the communion table, engaged in liturgical services pre- 
paratory to the, communion on the following day. They faced each 
other (the table between them), having their backs to a portion of the 



9 8 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



congregation may be able the better to hear, 
see, and understand that the reciting of the 
words of the institution of the Supper takes 
place, not on account of the bread and wine, 
but on account of the people, as also Christ 
Himself did not talk with the bread and wine, 
but with His disciples, in the institution of the 
Supper." (a.d. 1595.) 

Even Luther himself, with all his conser- 
vatism in these outward matters, says that the 
"vestments [Messgewander), altars, and candles 
might be allowed to remain as yet, until they 
are all to be changed, or until we think it is the 
right time. But in the right mass [he means 
the Supper], with true Christians, the altar 
would have to be changed, and the priest [min- 
ister] always to turn toward the people, as Christ 
Himself doubtless did in the Supper." 

That eminent theologian and writer on 
Church History, Professor K. R. Hagenbach, 
of Basle, says : 

"The elements (bread and wine) are placed 
upon the Table of the Lord, and are thence 
distributed to the people. This table is, in the 
Catholic and the Lutheran Church, the altar. 

congregation, — a sort of compromise measure, we suppose, at least for 
the present. We repeat, such things are of themselves of no great 
moment, but as part and parcel of something back of them they are sig- 
nificant. On leaving the church referred to, a good, simple-hearted 
member of the congregation said to her companion, " Why did those 
two ministers stand sideways as they did ?" — a question which the other 
could not answer. 



MER CERSB UR G THEOL OGY. 



99 



The altar is also, in part, found in Reformed 



munion-table" In a note he remarks, "Table of 
the Lord is the proper biblical expression (i 
Cor. x. 21; compare Heb. ix. 2). The first 
Christians, it is well known, had no altars/'* 

DOES THE NEW OR MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY TEACH 



Let us see. An altar, in the view of Roman 
Catholics and Puseyite (or High Church) Episco- 
palians, is the specially holy place in the church. 
A special sacredness is attached to it, because 



* A year or more ago, we read an article in the Reformed Church 
Messenger from a correspondent, in which he compliments a previous 
writer, presumably another correspondent (for we have neither of the 
numbers of the paper at hand, and speak from memory), on having 
triumphantly proved that the removing of the altar in the churches in 
this country and putting in their place a table was an " innovation," 
and consequently " -anti- Reformed 7" I may not use the correspondent's 
exact words, but I am sure I give the substance. I have no recollection 
whatever of seeing the article with its triumphant proofs, and can only 
surmise what they must have been, — probably the removal of square 
wooden things yclept altars, but which were no altars, and which the 
people and their ministers most assuredly did not regard as such in the 
sacrificial sense. After what we have allowed some of our Reformed 
standards and other authorities to testify on the subject of the altar on 
the foregoing pages, we are inclined to think that the triumphant proof 
was probably of the kind which a certain young pulpit orator years 
ago furnished. He boldly announced that he would (i) explain and 
show where the wind came from, (2) whither it went, and (3) that, 
as nobody had ever seen the wind, it was more than probable that 
nobody knew whence it came or whither it went ! 




OTHERWISE ? 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



only from it should intercession be made or 
prayer for the people be offered. It should be 
an altar in form as well as in fact: hence the 
great zeal which some of our younger brethren 
display to have the " puritanic table" removed 
and the right sort of thing substituted therefor. 
Hence we have had a profusion of articles in 
our Church periodical on the subject in time 
past, long before it was clearly declared what 
was included in the altar-service. 

This term, altar-service, is of itself sufficiently 
significant. It tells any one who is acquainted 
with High-Church Lutheran or High-Church 
English writers that it means immensely more 
than some more or less multifarious liturgical 
forms or ritual ceremonials. A mere outward 
service of this sort might be nothing more than a 
matter of taste, — something aesthetical, perhaps. 
But in ecclesiastical language that word has a 
peculiar, fixed, and definite meaning. It includes 
the sacrificial and priestly view to which we 
have referred at some length. The altar belongs 
to that, and is in harmonious accord with it, and 
with no other view. Dr. Nevin well understood 
this when he used that term in his tract before 
the Liturgy made its public appearance. Perhaps 
few, comparatively, among our ministers then 
understood it ; many do not now, — if we may 
judge from their declarations that there are no 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. IOI 

doctrines enunciated in the Liturgy, especially 
in the new Order of Worship, which go beyond 
the confessional system of the Reformed Church. 
That this is so is, however, confessed by Dr. 
Nevin himself, nor was he at fault on that 
account, although it might perhaps have been 
expected from him that he should have more 
fully advertised his unsuspecting brethren and 
the Church at large of the fact. He said frankly 
that his idea of a liturgy was that of an altar- 
liturgy. That should have been sufficient to 
tell every one of us what was comprehended in 
his plan of a liturgy. But it was not. And when 
a few of us hinted even that a great deal was 
meant by it, we were looked upon as " enemies 
of Dr. N.," and I know not what else. 

In his "Vindication of the New Liturgy," Dr. 
Nevin says : 

" I may say that I hardly expected or wished 
the Synod to fall in with the high view of altar- 
worship presented in the tract" (p. 33). 

Again : " The idea of an altar-liturgy was de- 
clared [by him] to be alone worthy of respect." 

He says " the Synod knew perfectly well 
where the committee [of the Liturgy] stood in 
regard to the whole subject." 

Here, we think, he is mistaken, and just this 
not understanding the full import of what was 
comprehended in an altar-liturgy on the part 
9* 



102 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



of the great majority both of ministers and 
people at that time, laid the foundation of the 
great troubles afterwards. But of this it is not 
our purpose to speak. 

It was an altar-liturgy that was intended to 
be prepared, not a " mere pulpit-liturgy," says 
Dr. Nevin, " a collection of dry forms [but must 
the forms necessarily be dry because not read 
at the altar ?] for the use of the minister, in the 
usual style of such mechanical helps. It was 
something altogether different from that. It 
carried with it the spirit and power of a true 
altar-liturgy, . . . not simply a scheme of re- 
ligious service, but a scheme also of religious 
thought and belief materially at variance with 
preconceived opinion in certain quarters" 
[rather, at variance with the doctrinal faith and 
standard of the Reformed Church, as it is else- 
where also candidly acknowledged to be].* 

No one, we think, will undertake to say that 
an altar-liturgy, with all that it includes, was 
ever intended by the Synod in Norristown, in 
1 849, when it first appointed the committee to 
prepare a new Liturgy; no one, after the decided, 
clear, ringing testimony of the early standards 
and other authorities of the Reformed Church 



* Dr. Nevin says of the Western Liturgy that " it lacks the very 
centre of all liturgical worship, namely, a true central altar-sacrifice." 
This is speaking out manfully in words of " no uncertain sound." 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



103 



which have been adduced (and which might be 
increased tenfold), will dare to say that such was 
the "worship of our fathers." There was not one 
Reformed congregation three hundred years 
ago, and there is not one now on the continent 
of Europe, which has used or is now using such 
an altar-liturgy, with all that is included in it, in 
the sense and meaning as held by Dr. Nevin 
and those who hold his views on the subject 
under consideration. This may seem a sweeping 
declaration, but we challenge a contradiction. 

Seeing, then, what is meant by an altar- 
liturgical service, it is not surprising that the 
Reformers in the sixteenth century, and the 
framers of the standards of the Church, and 
later evangelical writers down to the pres- 
ent time, so earnestly lifted up their voices 
against the altar. They, also, comprehended 
fully its meaning. It meant the human priest- 
hood ; it meant the sacrifice ; it meant the 
priest clothed with power and authority, all in 
some sense akin to, if not in full measure 
with, that which. obtains in the Roman Catholic 
Church. There they had seen its workings in 
perfection, and they felt in the very depth of 
their souls that the Reformation would have no 
meaning and could not be justified if the main 
prop and pillar of the Papacy — the priesthood 
with its altar and sacrifice — were suffered to 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



stand intact. Hence their outspoken opposition 
to it. (For a truly masterly delineation of the 
papal system, see some extracts in the Appendix 
(I.) from Dr. Dorner's Essay read before the 
Evangelical Alliance in New York.) 

The editor of the New York Christian Intel- 
ligencer (Reformed Dutch) says on this subject : 

. . . " We do offer to God spiritual sacrifice 
when we offer devout worship to Him, but these 
acts of prayer and praise cannot be laid upon 
any table or altar which is open to human 
inspection. The heart is the altar from which 
they ascend. These acts in their very nature 
are spiritual, and the addition of any material 
object seems to us to be irrelevant. ' God is a 
spirit, and they that worship Him must worship 
in spirit and in truth.' It is all true that public 
worship needs forms of expression. It is de- 
signed to find utterance in words ; but the 
simplest forms of speech are as acceptable as 
the most elaborate of liturgies, when they pro- 
ceed from a heart filled with the love of God. 
In using symbols for the furtherance of public 
devotion, we must have New Testament warrant 
for the adoption of any rite or the introduction 
of any emblematic device. Rome has adopted 
the altar in order to keep prominently before 
her devotees the idea of the real presence in 
the offering up of the mass, which she calls the 
'unbloody sacrifice of the mass.' With the 
special design of insisting upon the transub- 
stantiation of the wafer into the real body and 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



blood of Christ, she sets up her altars in the 
buildings which are dedicated to the exercise of 
her forms of worship. The wafer, after the form 
of consecration in the use of which it is regarded 
as miraculously converted into the real, actual, 
living Christ, is called the host, i.e., hostia, a 
victim, and our Lord is represented as being 
thus perpetually and repeatedly offered up as 
often as this ceremony is repeated. The use 
of the altar, under such circumstances, is espe- 
cially significant, but apart from all such ideas 
the relevancy of this furniture is not easily 
understood. The usages of the Church of 
Rome indicate, as it seems to- us, that our 
Lord is crucified afresh, and such acts of wor- 
ship cannot be acceptable, because they are 
manifestly in direct contradiction of the words 
of Holy Scripture. By that one sacrifice offered 
on Calvary, He has forever perfected them 
that are sanctified. That oblation cannot be 
repeated. It was the one great transaction 
in which all the sacrificial ceremonies of the old 
Jewish ritual found their completion. There 
remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, since Christ 
has died, except that one oblation which is of 
perpetual efficacy ; and therefore the use of the 
altar apart from all affinity with such views is 
not relevant." 



AN ALTAR-LITURGY INCONSISTENT WITH THE GE- 
NIUS AND CUSTOMS OF THE REFORMED CHURCH. 

We have already shown that the doctrines 
contained in the Liturgy (" Order of Wor- 



io 6 MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 

ship") are not in accordance with the teachings 
of the Heidelberg Catechism. But, apart from 
the doctrinal departure, a most serious objection 
holds against that book, more even than to its 
predecessor, the Provisional Liturgy, because 
of its complicated and constrained ceremonial. 
The Reformed Church never worshiped ac- 
cording to anything of the sort. That there 
were forms of prayer and other services pre- 
pared during the Reformation period, not only 
by Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, and even by Knox 
(in Scotland), we know full well — none of them, 
however, in the style of the " Order of Wor- 
ship ;" but we know, also, that those forms, 
which were retained at first from expediency, 
soon came to be distasteful to the people, and 
hence, with the exception of a few prayers and 
sacramental forms, etc., were very soon out of 
use in public worship. A full responsive ser- 
vice, away from the gorgeous cathedral or simi- 
lar surroundings, is in fact out of place. It is 
not in harmony with Protestant houses of wor- 
ship and with the genius of the Protestant 
Church, in which, although too much preponder- 
ance may often have been given to preaching 
and too little to prayer and praise, yet, thank 
God, the preaching of the word is, and ought 
to be, according to the word of God and the 
examples of the Apostles, the central part 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. lo y 

of the worship in God's house. In propor- 
tion as ritualism is made prominent, the 
sermon will fall into the background, — the 
pulpit will be overshadowed by the altar, — an 
evidence of which, in its incipiency, is already 
showing itself in the utterances and even in 
some cases in the practice in some quarters 
in our own Church. Now, we say that this 
style of worship is new and strange in the 
Reformed Church. Neither in Germany, Swit- 
zerland, France, Holland, nor, indeed, anywhere 
else, have we seen or heard anything of the 
kind. And we are confident in our own mind 
that it never will, it never can be ingrafted 
upon the Reformed Church in this country. 
You may get people here and there to submit 
to it, they may unthinkingly agree to it to 
please the preacher, or some may even be 
made to believe that it is "worshiping as the 
fathers did," and that it is therefore according 
to the "genius and spirit of the Church a hun- 
dred years ago" (which is simply not so) ; but 
as for a hearty acceptance and adoption, it will, 
we are fully persuaded, never be done. You 
may get an organ and a choir to go through 
certain portions of the service, and you may 
have faint-hearted responses here and there, but 
the great mass of the people will eschew it. And 
then what is gained by any such forced method 



I0 8 MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



of introducing the Liturgy? Heart-burnings, 
distractions, confusion, and all manner of evil 
fruits. A few only of our congregations use 
the service in full now, after years of effort to 
introduce it ; and are these benefited by it, even 
in an external way ? It seems not. And as for 
the German portion of the Church — by far the 
largest portion yet — whether native or foreign 
born, we know not of a single congregation 
which has expressed the desire to have a full 
liturgical service. Indeed, the Liturgy has only 
quite recently been translated into German, a 
proof that it was not called for, and we pre- 
dict that the book will lie on the shelf for a 
long time, and then scarcely find entrance into 
any number of German congregations. This 
was our conviction thirteen years ago, when we 
were appointed one of a committee to trans- 
late the Provisional Liturgy into the German 
language, before we were fully aware of the 
objectionable doctrinal contents of the book. 
On that account we afterwards declined to 
serve on the committee, and the Synod, after 
waiting one or more years, finally dropped the 
matter, and only recently had the work pub- 
lished. 

Dr. Nevin has declared more than once that 
it did not seem to meet with favor, and had 
therefore better be given up. But some others 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



IO9 



were fully bent, it seems, on pushing matters to 
an extreme, and by their actions, if not by their 
words, seemed to say that they would rather 
see the institutions at Lancaster given up, and 
general disaster to the Church ensue, than give 
up the Liturgy. 

Now we ask brethren, why this uncalled-for 
zeal to force upon the Church (for it is, after all, 
force in some form) a liturgical service which 
is foreign to our custom and genius as a de- 
nomination ? For most assuredly it is foreign 
in both these respects, although it has been de- 
nied again and again, we charitably hope from 
ignorance rather than from a worse motive. 
This we shall now try to substantiate from the 
admissions and confessions of the principal au- 
thor of the Liturgy, Dr. Nevin. 

In his tract on the " Liturgical Question," he 
says that it was constructed on a different plan 
from any of the Liturgies of the Reformed 
Church (p. 39). And in the following pages are 
these words (the italicizing is our own) : 

" It is to be fully admitted that there lay in 
the distinguishing spirit of the Reformed Con- 
fessions, as such, from the beginning, a tendency 
in opposition to the constraint of fixed religious 
rites and ceremonies, which could hardly fail to 
exert an injurious influence on any work of this 
sort [an altar-liturgy]. It belonged, as we all 
know, to the Reformed Church, to represent 
10 



IIO MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 

that side of the Christian life in which the 
inward, the free, the spiritual in religion are 
asserted against the authority of the merely 
outward in every view. Such is her historical 
vocation, — such her genius." Again, on page 
50 he says, speaking of the Provisional Liturgy, 
" It has not professed at all to be of one order 
simply with the liturgical practice of the Ger- 
man Reformed Church of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, and much less of one order with what had 
come to be its liturgical practice in the eigh- 
teenth century, when it was first transplanted to 
this country. That practice, from the beginning, 
is believed to have been too naked and bald, 
running naturally into the theory which makes 
a liturgy to be a book of outward forms and 
nothing more. The new Liturgy was constructed 
throughout on another theory altogether, — the 
theory of an altar-service, in distinction from 
what may be called a service simply of the pul- 
pit. — It makes common cause with the Liturgies 
of the ancient Church. — It breathes throughout 
a sacrificial spirit!' (Page 51.) "The Reformed 
Confession from the beginning has not been 
favorable to much outward form or ritual action 
in worship ; and its liturgical productions have 
all along been more in sympathy with the pul- 
pit than the altar." (Page 60). "It requires no 
argument to show that it is not after the pat- 
tern strictly of any system of worship which 
has prevailed hitherto in the German Reformed 
Church, either in this country or in Europe. It 
makes no such profession or pretense. If, then, 
we want no such innovation upon the old system, 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. m 

. . . it is most certain, without further question, 
that the new Liturgy, as it now stands, is not 
what we need, or should be willing to receive. 
It is a question of very material change in our 
Church practice, if not in our Church life. The 
new Liturgy is for us as a Church in many re- 
spects a new scheme of worship. It is not the 
pattern according to which our fathers wor- 
shiped, either in these United States, or else- 
where!' (Page 62.) Again, "We can never be 
satisfied with the Old Palatinate Liturgy, nor 
with any of the Helvetic Liturgies used in the 
sixteenth century, or since ; and still less, of 
course, with any of the jejune formularies that 
were used by our ministerial fathers of the last 
century here in America. No reconstruction 
of any such order of worship will serve our 
purpose." (Page 71.) 

Let this suffice to show that an altar-liturgy 
is not after the pattern of the Reformed Church 
in any period of her history. It needs no further 
proof, an abundance of which we have lying be- 
fore us, to substantiate this, especially as it is 
so fully and unequivocally acknowledged by the 
highest authority. Dr. Nevin himself. Only let 
none of the younger brethren hereafter use the 
argument that the use of a liturgy, of an altar- 
liturgy, in the Church is "only going back to 
the usages of the old Reformed Church as it 
used to be," or that it is " merely reviving old 
customs which Puritanism or Methodism had 



I I 2 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY, 



for a time brought into disuse." We forbear 
to characterize such declarations as they justly 
deserve. There is not a shadow of fact to sus- 
tain them. Just in the same way it has been 
maintained, even by theological teachers, in re- 
gard to the new doctrinal position, of which we 
may, by way of example, quote but a single sen- 
tence : " If the doctrinal position concerning the 
Liturgy is once understood," says Dr. Apple, in 
the Messenger, on " False Alarms," — " if it is 
once understood that that position is none other 
than the Church has all along maintained, a 
large portion of the wind will be taken out of 
the sails of those who oppose it." Now let the 
candid reader refer to the frank confessions 
made by Dr. Nevin and others, quoted in pre- 
vious pages in this book and elsewhere, in 
which there is avowed an utter and entire re- 
nunciation of all past and present " reigning 
Protestantism," and we think " the wind will be 
taken out of the sails" of Dr. Apple to a de- 
gree that must bring his craft to a dead stop. 

Yes, verily ! " It is a question of very material 
change in our Church practice, if not in our 
Church life. ... It is not the pattern accord- 
ing to which our fathers worshiped, either in 
these United States, or elsewhere." So says Dr. 
Nevin ; and he knows what he says, and says 
what he knows. 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 

Let this be understood, then, once for all, 
without further debate or controversy. The 
sophistical Mephistopheles, in Goethe's Faust, 
misled the poor young man who came to him 
for the arcana of knowledge, when he said to him 
to " stick to his words if he would pass through 
the gate into the temple of certain ty ;" and when 
the young man said something about the impor- 
tance of having some truth or some meaning 
connected with words, his teacher glossed over 
in a most wretched way his sophistry, by telling 
the young man, with wonderful assurance, — 

" Schon gut ! Nur muss man sich nicht allzu angstlich qualen; 
Derm eben wo Begriffe fehlen. 
Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein. 
Mit Worten lasst sich trefflich streiten, 
Mit Worten ein System bereiten, 
An Worte lasst sich trefflich glauben, 
Von einem Wort lasst sich kein Iota rauben." 

Let our brethren on the other side frankly 
acknowledge, " This is essentially a new thing, 
such as the Reformed Church never before had, 
even so far as the outward form of it is con- 
cerned, but we believe it is better than the old, 
and therefore we want you to permit your min- 
isters to introduce it." 

That would be candid, honest, truthful. And 
if the people wish to have it, if they " long for it," 
as has been said, if the great mass of our 
church-members show that it is in harmony 
with their convictions and feelings, then, in 

IO* H 



114 MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 

God's name, let them have it, and we will 
answer with a loud, responsive Amen ! But, 
on the other hand, if such is not the case, then 
we beseech brethren, for the love of God and 
of Christ, for the peace and prosperity of the 
Church, and for the sake of that charity which 
never faileth, to desist from their endeavors by 
this and that means to obtain an unwilling sub- 
mission to that which, if their whole heart is not 
in it, must prove the very opposite of true wor- 
ship, and so must prove displeasing in the sight 
of God and of good men. 

THE SACRAMENTS. 

We have shown with sufficient clearness, we 
hope, that the new theory taught in Mercers- 
burg and Lancaster is of such a radical charac- 
ter that it necessarily affects the whole range of 
Christian doctrine. Hence it must, as a matter 
of course, affect also the important subject of 
the sacraments. 

Let us then see, in the first place, what is the 
teaching of the Reformed Church on the sacra- 
ments in general, and then on each one of the 
two sacraments in particular. We quote from 
the Catechism : 

"Quest. 65. Since then we are made par- 
takers of Christ and all His benefits by faith 
only, whence does this faith proceed ? 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



"5 



"Ans. From the Holy Ghost, who works faith 
in our hearts by the preaching of the gospel, 
and confirms it by the use of the sacraments. 

" Quest. 66. What are the sacraments ? 

"Ans. The sacraments are holy visible signs 
and seals appointed of God for this end, that 
by the use thereof He may the more fully declare 
and seal to us the promise of the gospel, to wit, 
that He grants us freely the remission of sin, and 
life eternal, for the sake of that one sacrifice of 
Christ accomplished on the cross. 

"Quest. 67. Are both word and sacraments 
ordained and appointed for this end, that they 
may direct our faith to the sacrifice of Jesus 
Christ on the cross as the only ground of our 
salvation ? 

"Ans. Yes, indeed ; for the Holy Ghost 
teaches us in the gospel, and assures us by the 
sacraments, that the whole of our salvation de- 
pends upon that one sacrifice of Christ which He 
offered for us on the cross!' 

Here, then, we have a clear statement of the 
nature of the sacraments, and also of the con- 
nection which exists between faith and the sacra- 
ments. In the first of the foregoing answers 
we are told that the Holy Ghost works faith in 
our hearts by the preaching of the gospel, and 
(in the language of Ursinus) "cherishes, confirms, 
and seals it by the use of the sacraments. The 
word is a charter, to which the sacraments are 
attached as signs. The charter is the gospel 
itself, to which the sacraments are affixed as the 



Il6 MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 

seals of the Divine will. Whatever the word 
promises concerning our salvation through 
Christ, that the sacraments, as signs and seals 
annexed thereto, confirm unto us more and 
more for the purpose of helping our infirmity." 
(Comment., p. 340.) 

It will thus be seen that, according to Re- 
formed doctrine, the sacraments are not in and 
of themselves efficacious to salvation. It is 
faith that saves. The sacraments are " holy 
visible signs and seals appointed of God for 
this end, that by the use thereof He may the 
more fully declare and seal to us the promise of 
the gospel, to wit, that He grants us freely [that 
which the word has already assured to us] the 
remission of sin, and life eternal, for the sake 
of that one sacrifice of Christ accomplished on 
the cross." 

"We are made partakers of Christ and all 
His benefits [not in or by baptism, but] by faith 
only!' The answer to Question 32, "Why art 
thou called a Christian ?" is in this clear and 
unequivocal form : " Because I am a member of 
Christ [not by baptism, but] by faith!' There 
is much more to the same effect which could be 
adduced in our incomparable Catechism, which 
the more we study the more we admire and love 
it. But let this suffice. The Catechism does 
not teach that forgiveness of sins, the grace of 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



117 



salvation, or the new spiritual life (regeneration), 
is bound to the rite of baptism. 

This is the teaching also of all the standards 
of the Reformed Church. Let us listen to one 
or two of these out of many : 

The Confession of Brandenburg (Prussia) : 
"Therefore baptism is called the bath of re- 
generation, and consequently also that of the 
covenant and adoption {Kindschafi) of God, 
because it is a sign and seal of such grace of 
God. And this grace is as sure to us who 
believe [not who are baptized~\ as certainly as 
we are baptized, according to the promise, 
Whosoever believeth and is baptized shall 
be saved." (See also the Palatinate Baptism 
Formulary.) 

Dr. Heppe, the able Reformed theologian, 
in setting forth the old Reformed doctrine, 
which it is confessed on all sides that he has 
done with great impartiality, says : 

" The reception of the grace, the communica- 
tion of which is attested and sealed through 
baptism, is not bound to the outward act and to 
the moment of the sacramental transaction, be- 
cause the efficacy of baptism rather presupposes 
the faith and conversion of men as already at 
hand." (Much more to the same effect might be 
quoted from this learned living author.) 

Calvin, speaking of the Catholics, who attri- 



Il8 MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 

bute to the sacraments all kinds of hidden 
virtues by which justification and grace are 
conferred, says : 

" It is impossible to express the pestilent 
and fatal effects of this opinion. . . . Yea, 
it is manifestly diabolical, because, by promising 
justification without faith, it hurries souls into 
destruction. . . . We see this exemplified in 
the centurion [Cornelius], who, after having 
received the remission of his sins and the 
visible graces of the Holy Spirit, was baptized, 
not with a view of obtaining through baptism a 
more complete remission of sins, but a stronger 
exercise of faith and an increase of confidence 
from that pledge (Acts x. 44-48). Perhaps it 
is objected, Why then did Ananias say to Paul, 
'Arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins' ? 
I answer, we are said to receive or obtain that 
which our faith apprehends, as presented to us 
by the Lord, whether at the time when He first 
declared it to us, or when, by a subsequent 
testimony, He affords us a more certain con- 
firmation of it." 

Now, what are the views of the Mercersburg- 
Lancaster school on this subject? Do they 
conform to the foregoing clearly-expressed 
views of the Reformed Church, or do they 
not? 

Before quoting the language of the new 
theory on baptism, the reader must remember 
the peculiar view which lies back of it as its 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



II 9 



groundwork, in order to understand fully the 
" reason of things" in their connections. 

Let it be remembered, then, that redemption, 
according to the new theory, is brought to man 
(we quote Dr. Nevin's language) " by an organic 
conjunction with the Saviour, in a way that makes 
Him to be the actual life-principle of their new 
Christian being, and shows their life to be 
mysteriously involved in His from the com- 
mencement to its close. . . . Religion, to be 
real, must be in some way a community of life 
with God, ... an inward conjunction in a real 
way, ... an incorporation of this higher 
element into the actual onflowing life of the 
world." (Language, this, which sounds strange 
to the ear that has not been familiar with the 
theosophic system of Jacob Bohme or the writ- 
ings of the school of the pantheist Spinoza.) 

Now, in consistency with such a view of re- 
demption is Tract No. 3, acknowledged to be 
by one of the professors in Lancaster, in which 
it is said that 

" All the benefits of Christ are received, not 
by faith, not through previous knowledge of our 
misery, not in the way of repentance and faith, 
but through baptism, and through baptism ex- 
clusively." And again: "There is no way in 
which a man can be created anew by the Spirit, 
according to the established economy of salva- 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



tion, but by baptism." And again : " A sinner 
may be penitent for his sins, but until he has 
received baptism, as God's act of remission to 
him, he has no true assurance of remission. 
And when after baptism he sins through in- 
firmity, he cannot be sure of pardon till his 
absolution is spoken, signed, and sealed by 
Christ, by the means of a Divine act through 
the Church." 

Another writer of respectable standing on 
the same side, in speaking of baptism, holds 
the following singular language : 

" It is, in a few words, the implantation of the 
germ or principle of a new or spiritual life from 
Christ, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, 
brought to pass in connection with the proper 
use of the outward sign" (baptism). 

Our honored father used to tell us that if we 
had one or two good, clear, unmistakable proofs 
in favor of any point, it was as valid as twenty 
or fifty, and, besides, saved time. We leave the 
reader to look for himself " on this picture, and 
then on this," and judge whether this new theory 
does or does not square with the teachings of 
the Reformed Church. And this is all that 
we intended. We did not design to enter upon 
any discussion as to the merits or demerits 
of the new theory here. We say nothing in 
reference to the question what the sacraments 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. I2 i 

are in an objective way. We believe, with the 
Reformed Church, that they are more than mere 
outward signs, yea, that there is an offer of 
grace tendered through them. But we waive 
all that, and have fulfilled our task if we have 
succeeded in showing that, so far at least as 
baptism is concerned, our brethren of Lancaster 
teach another system altogether on the subject 
from that of our standards and of all Reformed 
theologians.* And that is enough for us for 



* Dr. Nevin, in his " Vindication of the Liturgy" (p. 89), quotes 
from the French Reformed divine Pressense, with approbation, his 
saying, " It is impossible to establish the necessity of infant baptism, 
except upon the ground that baptism imparts a special grace;" 
and then Dr. Nevin adds, " We are decidedly of the same opinion, 
and for this reason we denounce this theology [the anti-liturgical 
theology he calls it] as in reality . . . hostile to infant baptism." 
(Just before he characterized it as " Pelagian," landing us swiftly in 
downright Rationalism.) 

Now we, too, are " decidedly of the same opinion" with the eminent 
and good Pressens6 ; and as we had the privilege of personally knowing 
him and his views on this and other theological subjects, and, more- 
over, have read some of his works, we can assure Dr. Nevin that if 
he agreed fully with the entire theological system of that divine, 
including the subject of baptism, there would be no need of any con- 
troversy in our Reformed Church. This is one way of seeking comfort 
from European theologians. So Dr. Apple refers to the " excellent Dr. 
Christlieb's" address at the Alliance over against our American theology 
on the subject of inspiration, when in fact hardly a respectable theolo- 
gian of this country could be found who holds essentially a different 
view from that incidentally touched upon by Dr. C. But it cannot 
have escaped Dr. Apple that the excellent Christlieb's entire stand-point 
in theology is an out-and-out opposition to the new theory. So with 
Dr. Nevin and Dr. Pressense. This eminent man holds good Reformed 
doctrine on other subjects as well as on the subject of baptism, and 
11 



122 MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 

the present If they, in their judgment, think 
that they have discovered something deeper 
and better from pre-Reformation authors, if 
they choose to sit at the feet and learn of 
men in the fourth and sixth centuries rather 
than of those of the sixteenth, they have a 
natural right to do so. But we submit that 
they have no moral right in the case. As 
ministers, and especially as teachers of theol- 
ogy, they are solemnly sworn as by a solemn 
oath to expound the fundamental doctrines 
of the gospel as explained and taught in the 
Reformed Church. If they cannot do this, they 
should have no difficulty in seeing what their 
duty is in such circumstances* We ought 

every Reformed minister can say Amen to them. But Dr. N. can rest 
assured that he repudiates in toto his entire system, just as Dorner and 
Liebner and others have been found to do when it comes to the 
marrow of things, and not merely to some non-essential " points." 

* The following is the form prescribed in the Constitution : 
" At his inauguration a professor elect shall solemnly affirm the fol- 
lowing declaration, as by an oath, in the presence of God, in a public 
assembly : 

" You, N. N., professor elect of the Theological Seminary of the 
German Reformed Church in the United States, acknowledge sincerely 
before God and this assembly, that the Holy Scriptures of the Old 
and New Testament, which are called canonical Scriptures, are genuine, 
authentic, inspired, and therefore Divine Scriptures; that they contain 
all things which relate to the faith, the practice, and the hope of the 
righteous, and are the only rule of faith and practice in the Church of 
God ; that, consequently, no traditions, as they are called, and no 
mere conclusions of reason, which are contrary to the clear testimony 
of these Scriptures, can be received as rules of faith or of life. You 
acknowledge, further, that the doctrine contained in the Heidelberg 
Catechism is the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures, and must, there- 
fore, be received as in accordance with Divinely-revealed truth. You 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



123 



perhaps not to dismiss this subject without 
some reference to the form of baptism in the 
new Order of Worship, in which, of course, the 
same views are brought forward to which we 
have just referred. In the introduction the 
congregation is requested to call upon God, 
" that of His bounteous mercy He may grant 
to this child, through the holy sacrament of 
baptism, that which by nature he cannot have ; 
that being washed from his sins, and delivered 
from the power of the devil, he may be made a 
member," etc. 

And again, when addressing the parents : 

" You present this child here, and do seek 
for him deliverance from the power of the devil, 
the remission of sin, and the gift of a new and 
spiritual life by the Holy Ghost, through the 
sacrament of baptism, which Christ hath or- 
dained for the communication of such great 
grace!' — And similarly also in the closing 
prayer. 

No further remarks are necessary on this 
point. But that which strikes us as unusual 

declare sincerely, that in the office you are about to assume, you will 
make the inviolable Divine authority of the Holy Scriptures, and the 
truth of the doctrine contained in the Heidelberg Catechism, the basis 
of all your instructions, and faithfully maintain and defend the same, 
in your preaching and writing, as well as in your instructions ; you 
declare, finally, that you will labor, according to the ability which God 
may grant to you, that, with the Divine blessing, the students entrusted 
to your care may become enlightened, pious, faithful, and zealous 
ministers of the gospel, who shall be sound in the faith." 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



and strange in a baptismal form in a Reformed 
book is the phraseology brought out in several 
particulars, especially the words " delivered 
from the power of the devil," and "You pre- 
sent this child here, and do seek for him de- L 
liverance from the power of the devil," etc. 

We say this is unusual and strange in this 
connection. We know very well that those 
who urge its use charge those who object to 
it with Pelagianism, — that is, that they are 
tainted with low and unsound views on the 
subject of human depravity. Professor Rust 
was charged in this way, and, although he dis- 
avowed the charge in the most emphatic man- 
ner, the charge was repeated in the most un- 
ceremonious terms against that excellent man. 

Now, every reader of Church history knows 
that an extreme party in the Lutheran Church, 
in the seventeenth century, reinstated the 
popish ceremony of exorcism (Austreibung des 
Teufels) ; and hence they used those words in 
the form of baptism. In Germany a small 
number of ultra-Lutherans have again at- 
tempted, not indeed to introduce exorcism in 
form, but to interlard the form of baptism with 
the words just as in the Order of Worship ; 
but it created such a storm of opposition, even 
among the " faithful few," that the innovation 
has, so far as we learn, been abandoned, after 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



125 



first causing a division among the hyper-ortho- 
dox brethren themselves. 

The Reformed Church has ever protested 
against anything that looked in that direction. 
The Bremen Confession of 1595, speaking of 
exorcism, says that it 

" Strengthens many and great errors which 
should not by any means be suffered in the 
true Church of God. For if plain people hear 
that the devil is adjured in children, . . . what 
else can they think but that children are pos- 
sessed of the devil? But if it should be said 
that it refers to the spiritual tyranny of Satan, 
still the Scriptures speak only of reprobates, 
who have been given over to a perverse mind, 
and in whom Satan is mighty as in ' the children 
of disobedience,' that they are possessed of 
the devil. And it is one thing to be subjected 
to the power of original sin, and another thing 
to be spiritually possessed of the devil. Al- 
though all men are by nature children of wrath, 
and therefore of and for themselves subjected 
to the spiritual tyranny of Satan on account of 
original sin, yet it is otherwise with the children 
of believers, according to the special grace of 
God, through which such children belong to the 
covenant wherein Divine favor and the kingdom 
of heaven are promised to them ; and just as 
the wrath of God does not reign over them, 
so also is there no reigning power over them 
left to the devil." (See Appendix J.) 

This is discriminating and just, in making a 
11* 



j 2 6 MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



distinction between original sin and being under 
the power of the devil. And whether anything 
of Satanic possession is intended or not in the 
Liturgy, it is a most harsh and unjustifiable use 
of language, such as was never in vogue in the 
Reformed Church, and which, with the writer's 
view, deeply as he feels and knows what 
heights and depths of sin there are in the hu- 
man heart, he could and would never employ, 
and therefore he can only feel regret that it 
should ever have found a place in that book. 

Moreover, as Dr. Dorner very justly re- 
marks, " according to the Palatinate Liturgy the 
requirement of antecedent or subsequent peni- 
tent faith, in opposition to a magical efficacy, 
should not have been omitted. Besides, there 
is something unequal [eine Unebenheit\ in Nev- 
in's expressing himself in the strongest terms 
upon the guilt and damnableness of original 
sin as the ground for the baptism of infants, 
whilst in the doctrine of justification the for- 
giveness of sins does not occupy the independ- 
ent position as a turning-point" (in that doc- 
trine) . 

Very naturally and consistently with that 
view is that of clinical or lay baptism (Noth- 
taufe), which rests on the idea of a magical 
efficacy in its performance. Hence it is that in 
the Roman Catholic Church, and with some of 



MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. l2 j 

the ultra-Lutherans, a midwife may perform 
that rite, — nay, even Jews and Turks have 
performed it on sick or dying children, and it 
was pronounced valid by the Church and her 
priests ! 

The Reformed Church has always abhorred 
such a view, and we are well persuaded that 
our people will never submit to any such fetich- 
ism as this. 

" But no one in the Reformed Church teaches 
any such view." We are happy to say that we 
know of no one who does. And yet there is a 
" tendency" which seems to look in that direc- 
tion on the part of leading men in the Church. 
Their views of baptism must lead them to 
clinical baptism. And we know how many 
grave speeches were made in its favor at the 
Synod in Danville and the following year in 
Mechanicsburg. Did not brethren with great 
apparent solemnity declare that they could not 
rest contented in their minds if a child of theirs 
should pass out of the world unbaptized, and 
that if no minister were at hand they would let 
any one else baptize them ? It was found, how- 
ever, that the time had not yet come for that, 
and so it was postponed. We will close these 
remarks with an extract from a learned and 
well-known Reformed clergyman in Germany, 
who was informed of the discussions at the 



128 MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY. 



Mechanicsburg Synod through a young German 
then in this country. He says : 

" And your Synod discussed the question of 
the Nothtaufe in all true seriousness ! Verily, 
that is a significant sign of the times, and for 
the Reformed Church ! I doubt whether our alt- 
Luther aner here in Silesia, even, could muster 
twenty men who would dare to broach such a 
dogma publicly, — the men who say of us (Re- 
formed) that we have no baptism — who won't 
allow any but their own stripe to commune with 
them, and who would almost as soon allow Me- 
phistopheles to preach in their pulpits as they 
would allow you or me. One of these ultra- 
High-Church ecclesiastics said to me when I 
mentioned to him the fact as above : ' That is 
truly wonderful !' — Yes, I must repeat it : that 
you could even discuss such a theme, is a signifi- 
cant \_significantes~\ sign of the times, and tells 
me that the ' matin bells of Rome' must have 
been ringing in Pennsylvania. Do write and 
tell me whether such chimes have any charm 
for you! 1 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



The writer of these pages has no heart to 
enter at any length upon a discussion of this 
subject in its purely dogmatical form. He con- 
siders the Lord's Supper one of the most tender, 
holy, and blessed ordinances of Christianity, one 
in which all the love of God and the Lord Jesus 
Christ concentres, in which the believer has the 
nearest approach to the very heart of his 
Father, where, like the disciple who leaned on 
Jesus' bosom, he too is permitted, as it were, to 
lean lovingly, confidingly, and with an humble 
boldness. It is, therefore, a hallowed subject, 
one which the mind in a tender frame does not 
feel like profaning by controversial discussion. 
Nothing can be more sad to a devout heart than 
the fact that the very ordinance which was de- 
signed, among other things, to symbolize the 
love and fellowship, of all true Christians with 
one another and with Christ their blessed Lord 
and Master should have been made the occasion 
of heart-burnings and bitter strifes. Well may 

we cry out, with a lovely departed servant of 

i 129 



130 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



Christ,* " Oh for a cycle of peace ! Oh for a 
breathing-spell from these unnatural conten- 
tions ! I feel as if I could join with any who 
would humbly unite in direct and kind efforts 
to save sinners and relieve human misery. 
Cannot a poor believer go along in his pilgrim- 
age heavenward without being always on mili- 
tary duty ? At judgment I heartily believe that 
some heresies of heart and temper will be charged 
as worse than heavy doctrinal errors. To you 
I may say this, because you understand me as 
holding, not merely that the tenets of our 
Church are true, but that they are very impor- 
tant. But I see how easy it is to 'hold the truth' 
in rancor and hate, which is the grand error of 
depraved human nature, yea, and of diabolism 
itself." There is much force in this remark, and 
it has an important bearing on our subject. 
There may be, there are, no doubt, some whose 
views of this holy ordinance are too low, and 
yet they may have all the benefits and blessings 
for their spiritual well-being notwithstanding. 
And God forbid that we should therefore de- 
nounce those as outside of the pale of Christ's 
Church whom He has received, and who show 
forth in their lives and conduct the image and 
spirit of the Redeemer. Still, it is important 



* The Rev. Dr. James W. Alexander, in his " Familiar Letters," 
vol. i., i860. 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



that we should have Scriptural views of truth, 
and that these be neither mere notions or dry 
dogmas on the one side, nor fanciful or super- 
stitious speculations on the other. 

We shall, therefore, as already intimated, deal 
very briefly with the dogmatical statement of 
the subject on either side, whilst we shall furnish 
evidence of a satisfactory nature, as we humbly 
trust, that the commonly-received truths on the 
subject of the Eucharist are fully in accordance 
with the teachings of the Heidelberg Catechism 
and the word of God as these have been held 
in the Reformed Church-, and that the views as 
brought out in the Liturgy and elsewhere by 
the new theory are not in accordance with the 
faith of our Church and the word of God. 

And first of all we will bring forward the 
Catechism as a witness in regard to the teach- 
ings of the Church on this point, so that the 
reader may not need to lay aside the book for 
the purpose of reference. (The reader may 
also refer to Questions 65, 66, and 67 in the 
Catechism, which have already been quoted.) 

"Quest. 75. How art thou admonished and 
assured in the Lord's Supper that thou art a 
partaker of that one sacrifice of Christ, accom- 
plished on the cross, and of all His benefits ? 

"Ans. Thus, that Christ has commanded me, 
and all believers, to eat of this broken bread, 



132 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



and to drink of this cup, in remembrance of 
Him ; adding these promises, first, that His 
body was offered and broken on the cross for 
me, and His blood shed for me, as certainly as I 
see with my eyes the bread of the Lord broken 
for me, and the cup communicated to me : and 
further, that He feeds and nourishes my soul to 
everlasting life, with His crucified body and shed 
blood, as assuredly as I receive from the hands 
of the minister and taste with my mouth the 
bread and cup of the Lord, as certain signs of 
the body and blood of Christ. 

"Quest. 76. What is it then to eat the crucified 
body and drink the shed blood of Christ ? 

"Ans. It is not only to embrace with a believ- 
ing heart all the sufferings and death of Christ, 
and thereby to obtain the pardon of sin and life 
eternal ; but also, beside that, to become more 
and more united to His sacred body, by the 
Holy Ghost, who dwells both in Christ and in 
us ; so that we, although Christ is in heaven 
and we on earth, are, notwithstanding, ' flesh 
of His flesh and bone of His bone and that 
we live and are governed forever by one Spirit, 
as members of the same body are by one soul. 

"Quest. 77. Where has Christ promised that 
He will as certainly feed and nourish believers 
with His body and blood, as they eat of this 
broken bread and drink of this cup ? 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



133 



"Ans. In the institution of the Supper, which 
is thus expressed : ' The Lord Jesus, in the 
same night in which He was betrayed, took 
bread/ etc. (1 Cor. xi. 23-26 ; Matt. xxvi. 26; 
Heb. ix. 20). 

" This promise is repeated by the holy Apostle 
Paul, where he says, ' The cup of blessing which 
we bless, is it not the communion of the blood 
of Christ ? the bread which we break, is it not 
the communion of the body of Christ ? for we, 
being many, are one bread and one body ; 
because we are all partakers of that one 
bread' (1 Cor. x. 16, 17). 

11 Quest. 78. Do then the bread and wine be- 
come the very body and blood of Christ ? 

"Ans. Not at all ; but as the water in baptism 
is not changed into the blood of Christ, neither 
is the washing away of sin itself, being only the 
sign and confirmation thereof appointed of God ; 
so the bread of the Lord's Supper is not changed 
into the very body of Christ, though, agreeably 
to the nature and properties of sacraments, it is 
called the body of Christ Jesus. 

"Quest. 79. Why then doth Christ call the 
bread His body, and the cup His blood, or the 
new covenant in his blood ; and Paul the ' com- 
munion of the body and blood of Christ' ? 

"Ans. Christ speaks thus not without great 

reason, namely, not only thereby to teach us, 
12 



134 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



that as bread and wine support this temporal 
life, so His crucified body and shed blood are 
the true meat and drink whereby our souls are 
fed to eternal life ; but more especially by these 
visible signs and pledges to assure us that we 
are as really partakers of His true body and 
blood (by the operation of the Holy Ghost) as 
we receive by the mouths of our bodies these 
holy signs in remembrance of Him ; and that 
all His sufferings and obedience are as cer- 
tainly ours, as if we had in our own persons 
suffered and made satisfaction for our sins to 
God. 

" Quest. 80. What difference is there between 
the Lord's Supper and the Popish mass? 

"Ans. The Lord's Supper testifies to us that 
we have a full pardon of all sin by the only 
sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which He Himself has 
once accomplished on the cross ; and that we 
by the Holy Ghost are ingrafted into Christ, 
who, according to His human nature, is now not 
on earth, but in heaven, at the right hand of 
God His Father, and will there be worshiped by 
us : but the mass teacheth that the living and 
the dead have not the pardon of sins, through 
the sufferings of Christ, unless Christ is also 
daily offered for them by the priests ; and fur- 
ther, that Christ is bodily under the form of 
bread and wine, and therefore is to be worshiped 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



in them ;* so that the mass, at bottom, is nothing 
else than a denial of the one sacrifice and suffer- 
ings of Jesus Christ, and an accursed idolatry." 

On the first of these answers Ursinus has a 
long exposition, to which we refer the reader.f 
For the benefit of those who do not possess 
this work, we append the following extracts : 

" It is called the Lord's Supper, from the cir- 
cumstance of its first institution. . . . Paul calls 
it the Lord's Table. It is also called a covenant 
or assembly, from the fact that in the celebration 
of this supper there must be some, whether few 
or many, that meet together for this purpose. 
. . . This sacrament, therefore, consists in the 
rite and the promise annexed to it, or in the 
signs and the things signified. The rite or signs 
are the bread which is broken and the wine 
which is poured out and drunk. The things 
signified are the broken body and shed blood 
of Christ which are eaten and drunk, or our 
union with Christ by faith, by which we are 
made partakers of Christ and all His benefits, 
so that we derive from Him everlasting life, as 
the branches draw their life from the vine. We 
are assured of this our union and communion 
with Christ by the analogy which there is be- 



* In canone missae et de consecrat. distinct. 2 Concil. Trid., Sess. 
13. 15- 

j* We sincerely recommend this invaluable " Commentary of Ur- 
sinus," not only to young ministers, but to all our Church members. 
No family should be without it. It is a large royal octavo volume of 
658 pages, full of instruction for bo f h young and old. 



136 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



tween the sign and the thing signified, and also 
by the promise which is joined to the sign." 

[PP. 377, 378.] 

The Design of the Lord's Supper. — It was 
intended to be " a confirmation of our faith, or 
a most sure proof of our union and communion 
with Christ, who feeds us with His body and blood 
unto everlasting life, as truly as we receive 
these signs from the hands of the minister. 
This object is obtained by all those who receive 
these signs in true faith : for we so receive these 
signs from the hands of the minister, as if the 
Lord Himself gave them unto us with His own 
hand. It is in this way that Christ is said to 
have baptized more disciples than John, when 
He, nevertheless, did it through His disciples" 
(John iv. 1). [p 379.] 

In the exposition of Question 76, — 

" This eating- is that communion which we 
have with Christ, of which the Scriptures speak, 
and of which we make confession in the Creed, 
which consists in a spiritual union with Christ, 
as members with the head, and branches with 
the vine. Christ teaches this eating of His 
flesh in the sixth chapter of St. John, and con- 
firms it in the Supper by external signs. It is in 
this sense that the ancient fathers, such as Au- 
gustine, Eusebius, Nazianzen, Hilary, and others, 
explain the eating of Christ's flesh. ... It is 
plain, therefore, that neither the doctrine of 
transubstantiation, which the Papists advocate, 
nor a corporal presence of Christ and the eating 
of His body in the bread with the mouth, which 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



137 



many defend, can be established from the lan- 
guage which is employed in reference to the 
Supper which promises the eating of Christ's 
body." [p. 382.] 

(On this subject, as well as other points closely 
connected with it, see Appendix H for a mas- 
terly and truly edifying as well as instructive 
exposition.) 

The Mercersburg theory, it is hardly neces- 
sary to say, proceeds on an entirely different 
system, being ruled by its theory of the Incarna- 
tion. As we have no system of theology writ- 
ten out, as yet, from our brethren who differ 
from us on all the other points which have been 
under review, and very little has been said in 
a direct way by them on this subject, it is, of 
course, not very easy to say what their exact 
views are. But the Liturgy contains points of 
such wide departure from the Palatinate and all 
other Reformed forms on the Lord's Supper, 
uses language so singularly strange and un- 
usual, that our ears cannot but be pained by 
the great change. Thus, for instance, the well- 
known and hallowed phrases, " through the suf- 
ferings and death of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ" — " His broken body and shed 
blood" — are not found there. Why not? Dr. 
Nevin, in his "Vindication" (p. 92), says that 

the Liturgy " teaches that the Lord's Supper is 

12* 



j 38 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

more than an outward sign, and more than a 
mere calling to mind of our Saviour's death 
as something past and gone," — intimating that 
those in our Church whom he opposes did not 
hold, with the Catechism, that it was more than 
" an outward sign." He goes on to say: "It 
[the new theory] teaches that the value of 
Christ's sacrifice never dies, but is perennially 
continued in the power of His life ; . . . the un- 
dying power of Christ's life is there in the 
transaction, for all who take part in it by faith." 
This grace we are to appropriate, " and to bring 
it before God (the ' memorial of the blessed sac- 
rifice of His Son') as the only ground of our 
trust and confidence in His presence" (p. 93). 
Without this (mind, the " perennial," the " me- 
morial sacrifice"), he says, we should have no 
sacraments — we should plunge into the " full 
abyss of Rationalism." 

Well, then, the whole Protestant Church 
for three hundred and fifty years (except the 
fraction of Puseyites and ultra-Lutherans) are 
and have been " plunged" in this abyss : that's 
all ! Every thing for Dr. N. looks towards a 
sacrifice ; and although he repels the possible 
charge of holding anything so offensive as " the 
Roman Catholic so-called sacrifice of the mass," 
and although we are quite ready to accept his 
disclaimer, yet he must pardon us for saying 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



I 39 



that the entire drift of the teaching on this and 
co-related subjects points to something so like 
that offensive thing that we wonder that a man 
of such acumen as Dr. N. should not avoid 
even the "very appearance of evil." We are 
the more readily confirmed in this belief from 
the fact that at least one of our foremost men, 
who stood in the new theory years ago, was 
most deeply exercised on this very subject of 
the Romish mass, and earnestly desired that he 
might be able to believe it. We doubt not that 
others have been exercised in the same way, 
and that their wish culminated or will yet cul- 
minate in its realization, in one form or another. 

The idea of a sacrifice is there, and in a way 
that must grate upon every Protestant ear ; 
and all the harsh epithets of " rationalism, 
spiritualism, and puritanism" are idle as the 
wind, and simply prove that those who use 
these epithets are fully aware that they are 
breasting the mighty current of evangelical 
Protestantism at fearful odds. The late meet- 
ing of the Evangelical Alliance has told them 
that there are a unity and power in our " so- 
called Protestantism" (!) which, thank God, 
show that it is not yet dead, albeit its funeral 
dirge has been sung never so often in doleful 
and whining tones. 

To show what are the views of such a man 



140 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



as Dr. Dorner on the sacramental form in the 
Liturgy, we give the following calm and con- 
siderate words as they are found in his " Litur- 
gical Conflict:" 

" But in the form for the Lord's Supper, 
which otherwise contains much that is beau- 
tiful, the idea of a sacrifice presented by the 
communicants stands forth in a manner which 
is forced, and which must be offensive to 
an evangelical ear. It is not according to Cal- 
vin, as N. supposes, but to the Greek Church, 
that God is implored to ' send down upon 
the elements the powerful benediction of His 
Holy Spirit, that they may be set apart from 
a common to a sacred and mystical use, and 
exhibit and represent with true effect the 
Body and Blood of His Son Jesus Christ, so 
that in the use of them we may be made, 
through the power of the Holy Ghost, to par- 
take really and truly of His blessed life, whereby 
only we can be saved from death and raised to 
immortality at the last day/ (Nothing is said 
of the death of Christ.) On p. 176 of the new 
Liturgy, the chief point is : ' Cleanse our minds, 
we beseech Thee, by the inspiration of Thy 
Holy Spirit, that we, Thy redeemed people, 
drawing near unto Thee in these holy mys- 
teries, with a true heart and undefiled con- 
science, in full assurance of faith, may offer 
unto Thee an acceptable sacrifice in righteous- 
ness ;' and (on p. 181) it is required that this 
grace shall be appropriated, and that the me- 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



141 



morial of the blessed sacrifice of His Son be 
offered unto God. 

" All this shows that the Revised Liturgy con- 
tains many things which from the stand-point 
of the Evangelical Church must be pronounced 
objectionable and erroneous. Other things, 
even though they may admit of an evangelical 
sense, are expressed in strange terms, and 
should have been avoided to prevent natural 
offense. This is doubly necessary when the 
non-evangelical sense is the more obvious one 
and seeks to prop itself upon an entire theo- 
logical system." 

Here now we lay down our pen. God is our 
judge how much conflict it has cost us to use it 
at all. That introductory Letter was the solemn, 
decisive monitor and prompter to this under- 
taking. If any of our brethren shall feel tempted 
to deal harshly with us, we have made up our 
mind to bear it, and in no case to return railing 
for railing. We desire peace, and now in the 
eventide of our life more than ever we desire to 
pursue it. But we know that in the present state 
of things among us Truth is in order to Peace. 
We firmly believe that that truth has been in a 
measure forsaken by some of our brethren, and, 
unless they can honestly and conscientiously re- 
turn to the truth from which they have swerved, 
there can be no peace. It is not we, but they, who 
have brought this trouble into the Reformed 



142 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



Church. So we firmly believe ; and they them- 
selves admit it. They admit that their theory 
on all the points brought forward in this book 
is in many respects at variance, if not in direct 
conflict, with the general faith of the evangel- 
ical Protestant Church. From the bottom of 
our heart we love all Christ's true followers, 
whether found in this or that portion of Christ's 
kingdom, whether Protestant or Roman Catho- 
lic, for God has His people also in this last. 
But in the Protestant Church is our ecclesiastical 
home. In the Reformed branch of it were we 
born and reared under the prayers and pious 
teachings of godly parents. In it were their 
ancestors reared, some of them in the honored 
ranks of the ministry and the civil service, 
others in the more humble and retired walks 
of life ; but all, as the precious ancestral record 
has touchingly recorded it, "were a worthy, 
pious stock, true to the Church of their fathers, 
and true to their country in hours of trial 
and sorrow." My heart softens at the words as 
I read the certificate from the trembling hand of 
the venerable Westphalian pastor, given to my 
revered father when, more than a hundred years 
ago, he was about to leave his kindred for this 
Western world, which reads thus : " And may 
the God of your fathers go with and bless you, 
and make you a blessing in the New World ; 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



1 43 



and may you never forget that their name has 
a good sound here [einen guten Klang) in 
Westphalia. Honorable and true before man, 
devout and humble before God, earnest and 
devotedly attached to the Reformed Church, in 
which the whole family of your ancestors seem 
to have been conspicuous without bringing 
reproach upon their name, — follow such exam- 
ples, and let the name of your fathers not be 
dishonored in the Abendland, but may children's 
children rise up and bless it. Be true to your 
country, be true to the pure faith of your 
Church in head, heart, and life, and you will be 
true to your adopted country and your God /" 

By God's grace I have, though very, very im- 
perfectly, followed this pious counsel given to 
my parent arid through him to me. I love my 
Church, her pure martyr-faith and her worship. 
This Church is dear to me as the apple of my 
eye. My labors and toils in my better years 
have been cheerfully given to her. I have 
made no " sacrifices" worth speaking of ; I can 
boast of no great talents or learning ; I have 
performed no great deeds. And yet she has 
honored me in many ways, and in the forty-nine 
years of my imperfectly performed ministerial 
service I have shared as much — nay, more — of 
the good will, the love and respect of my min- 
isterial brethren and the membership at large, 



144 



THE LORD'S SUPPER. 



as any man ought to desire. I have, therefore, 
no ends to seek — no dissatisfied feelings which 
might incite me to oppose any portion of 
my brethren on personal grounds. This has 
been alleged against others, although, I must 
say, very unjustly, so far as I can see. Cer- 
tainly it is not so in my case. The Church has 
ever dealt gently with me, and often have I 
been humbled most deeply by it. She has my 
undying gratitude and love. I have nothing 
more to look forward to at my time of life, and 
I have no desire to be anything else than a 
private in the ranks, performing quietly such 
official duties as come to hand. But as I sol- 
emnly believe, so have I spoken, not to wound, 
but, if possible, to heal. My days will soon be 
numbered ; and when the number is full, and my 
head shall rest upon the death-bed pillow, I 
am persuaded that the truth which then, as now, 
will prove a balm and a cordial in my dying hour, 
will be the truth which, however feebly, I have 
sought to state and defend in these pages : 
" That I, with body and soul, am not my own, 
but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus 
Christ, who with His precious blood hath 

FULLY SATISFIED FOR ALL MY SINS." This is my 

hope, my only trust, my well-grounded assur- 
ance. Here I stand. I cannot otherwise. 
So help me God. Amen. 



APPENDICES. 



13 



K 



APPENDICES. 



THE FIRST TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR GIFT IN THE 
REFORMED CHURCH. 

Reference having been made, in the " Letter"* which precedes this 
volume, to the first ten thousand dollar donation which was given to 
the institutions of our Church by Mr. Daniel Kieffer, of Berks Coujity, 
Pennsylvania, it seems a fitting occasion to refer to the circumstances 
which led to the application, without laying any stress upon them or 
explaining them, leaving the latter to the psychologist if deemed of 
sufficient importance. 

When the special synod held in Lebanon in the winter of 1843 
had unanimously elected the Rev. Dr. F. W. Krummacher as German 
Professor in the Seminary at Mercersburg, Dr. Hoffeditz and myself 
were appointed commissioners to convey and more fully to explain the 
call to that eminent man. There had, however, been no adequate 
provision made for his support. Ten years before (in 1832) the first 
professorial endowment of ten thousand dollars had dwindled down, 
by losses and otherwise, to several thousand dollars less than that 
amount, which led to my appointment as an agent to make up this de- 
ficiency. The plan was to raise it by fifty-dollar subscriptions, which 
was at that time thought to be a very respectable and rather unusual 
sum. Coming to the well-to-do rural charge of my friend, the Rev. J. 
C. Bucher, in Middletown Valley, Maryland, that noble people responded 
so generously, under the leadership of their zealous pastor, that the 
amount needed was made up before I had canvassed one-half of the 
pastorate. Full of the idea that we ought to have another professor- 
ship endowed, and that that should be a German one, I took the 
responsibility, before I had time to receive any official sanction, to 
commence the raising of funds for a German professorship, for which, 
if I remember rightly, nearly two thousand dollars more were raised 
in that vicinity, which, as I was then providentially interrupted in my 
agency, was prosecuted by another for a short time, adding a thousand 
or two more to the subscription. 

This, therefore, was all the provision which had been made for a 



* The reference here alluded to is omitted in the Letter, to save space. 

147 



148 



APPENDICES. 



German professorship ; and even this amount, thus subscribed and col- 
lected, had, no doubt from dire necessity (for those were times when 
funds were generally low in our church treasuries), been diverted to 
other uses. At the special synod referred to, this state of unprepared- 
ness to support such a man as Krummacher was referred to; but there 
were brethren who were so zealous to have the author of " Elisha the 
Tishbite" among us, that they gave assurances of an overflowing 
treasury in thirty days' time. It was tacitly understood that, as an 
earnest, ten thousand should be pledged before the commissioners left 
for Germany. 

The commissioners had fixed to meet on the first of April, in Phila- 
delphia, and there they were to hear from the brethren who were so 
ardent in Lebanon, of the success of the pledges given. But Dr. 
Hoffeditz, it was found after several days of anxious waiting, could 
not leave home for a month. Nor was there a single response from 
any one in regard to the ten thousand dollars. That night was an 
anxious, sleepless night under a dear brother's roof. Now the thought 
came to my mind to single out ten brethren who, with myself included, 
should each give or raise one thousand dollars within thirty days. But 
this seemed a doubtful measure. Then there came " airy castles" one 
after another, only to vanish again. At last I laid hold of a remark 
which the Rev. J. C. Guldin once had made to me : " Some time when 
you go to your native place, Reading, go to see Daniel Kieffer, in Oley 
(about eight miles away). He is a pious man, unmarried, is blessed 
with earthly means, lives very plainly, but I think you could obtain 
perhaps a handsome donation for the Church from him. He gets your 
paper, esteems you," etc. 

But I had never seen him, and the fact that he was a plain farmer in 
Berks County seemed not to promise very much. But the thought, 
though once and again suppressed, would return again, — Go and see 
him. I so resolved. But the morning light soon dispelled the waking 
vision of the night. Instead of going to Reading, I went directly 
homeward to spend the night with my good friend, Judge Bucher, at 
Harrisburg. My dolorous plaint was confided to his ears — schemes 
and all. " I will be one of the ten," he promptly replied ; " but sup- 
pose you first follow out your rejected idea of seeing Mr. Kieffer." 
But I had lost all heart for it by this time. In the morning, at table, 
he related, in presence of his family, my distressed state of mind, and 
that I was fully resolved not to set sail for Europe unless the sum named 
was guaranteed. All joined in urging me to go to Reading. At last I 
brought forward the expense of a doubtful journey, whilst yet there 
was within me a faint lingering hope of possible success. After some 
time, the Judge remarked, " There is the stage at the door which I have 
ordered, and the fare to Reading is paid — and you will go." I was 
really glad of it, as things now came in this shape. Dr. Bucher was 
then the pastor in that city, who at once favored the visit. We drove 
to the unassuming farm-house, were cordially received, and in the 
evening opened up the case to our friend. It came as a surprise to the 
good man that we should wish so large a sum from one individual. 
But the case was a plain one, and Dr. Bucher knows well how to state 
such a case, for he was the Apollo of the occasion, and we left him to 



APPENDICES. 



149 



think over it during the night. Early in the morning we found him 
attending to his farm duties, and met him near the house. Dr. Bucher 
inquired at once whether he had made up his mind on the subject; 
to which, with an earnest look, he replied, " I have prayed over the 
matter, dear brethren, and by God's blessing I will do what you have 
asked of me." 

And so he did, although, through the intervention of certain meddle- 
some parties, the good man was led to withhold the gift for a time. 
But, through the considerate and prudent measures of Dr. Bucher, it all 
came right in the end. And thus was the first donation of ten thousand 
dollars obtained in the Reformed Church, and thus was a plain farmer 
of Berks County the instrument of founding the German (or second) 
professorship, which it is hoped will some day be occupied, as it was 
intended it should be, by a professor who will give instruction in the 
Seminary in that language. This statement I have thought due to the 
memoiy of the man who gave his money for a " German Professor- 
ship." 



IB. 

WHAT THE NEW THEORY CLAIMS TO HOLD. 

As a further proof that Dr. Nevin and his school do not pretend to 
hold the accepted and universally received doctrines of the Reformed 
Church, or even the generally received truths of Protestantism, we sub- 
join the following, out of many other declarations. Let the reader say 
what we are to think of those who over and over again tell us that the 
new theories " imply no change in Reformed doctrine and worship." 
To Dr. Nevin must, at least, be accorded the merit of speaking hon- 
estly and without reserve. We shall not say more in regard to these 
extracts, but throw in a few remarks of our own, in brackets. 

" With all our respect for the sixteenth century, there is no reason 
why we should be bound slavishly by all its opinions and judgments 
[not at all, only that as Reformed we have no right, so long as we are 
in that Church, to cast its " opinions and judgments" overboard] ; no 
reason why we should not see and acknowledge its defects, where they 
may appear plainly to exist." [Appear to exist for whom ? Shall every 
man's private judgment pit itself against the Church, as, for instance, 
Rationalism did in Germany in the last century, changing the hymn- 
books, catechisms, etc., to suit " the wants of the enlightened age" ?] 
1 — Nevin' s Liturg. Quest., p. 40. 

" The conflict in the case, as already said, is a conflict of theological 
systems; . . . a controversy about doctrines and articles of faith, that 
strikes far beyond the German Reformed Church, into the life of the 

13* 



APPENDICES. 



entire Protestantism of this land'''' [doctrines and articles of faith, — 
mark this, — and not merely those of our own Reformed Church, but all 
Protestantism^. — Nevin's Vind., p. 80. 

" It is to be freely admitted, moreover, that there lay in the distin- 
guishing spirit of the Reformed Confession, as such, from the beginning, 
a tendency in opposition to the constraint of fixed religious rites and 
ceremonies, which could hardly fail to exert an injurious influence on 
any work of this sort. It belongs, as we all know, to the Reformed 
Church, to represent that side of the Christian life in which the inward, 
the free, the spiritual, in religion, are asserted against the authority of 
the merely outward in every view. Such is her historical vocation ; 
such is her genius." — The Liturg. Quest., p. 41. [True, every word of 
it. The Reformed Church (more than the Lutheran) was ever de- 
cidedly opposed to the trammels of " fixed religious rites and cere- 
monies." She emphasized rather that side which is practical and 
" subjective" (so called). That was and is her genius — that her " his- 
torical vocation." Why shall it now, therefore, be ignored and cast 
out as vile and anathema ?~\ 

" The idea of a resuscitated theology, then, in our circumstances, 
requires something more than a simple return to the theology either of 
the seventeenth or sixteenth century." — Nevin, Merc. Rev., July, 
1868, p. 360. [But does it require us to go back to the time when 
priests, bishops, and popes scandalized religion and morality (accord- 
ing to their own historians) and resuscitate our theology from that 
period ?] 

" But this is just what repristination means here, whether on the Lu- 
theran side or on the Reformed side. Let it be anathema ?naranatha, 
then, we say, on both sides." — Merc. Rev., p. 363. [An inspired Apos- 
tle pronounced the Lord's anathema — upon whom ? Upon those who 
hated, i.e., did not love, the Lord Jesus Christ. Is it competent for any 
mortal man now to hurl that curse against those who do sincerely 
aim to love and honor the Lord Jesus, although they may not be will- 
ing to cast away the birthright of the Reformation ? We do not hold 
to a blind fettering of the spirit to every formulated dogma, as such, as 
this may have been held in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. But 
as to the essential truths of that period, no unhallowed rude hand may 
violently tear them asunder, in the style of the pope.] 

" This theology [the Mercersburg] has never professed to be of the 
same type with that around it." — Merc. Rev., July, 1867, p. 383. 

" Our Christological theology is distinctive. Let all understand this 
fully and finally, and then save themselves the useless pains of meas- 
uring it by their own." — p. 383. [This is fully understood. We know 
of no Protestant, or, for that matter, any other theology, that is just like 
it. It is a new type, but, as with wine, we think the old is better than 
the new.] 

" Thus it is to the honor of our theology that on the one hand it is 
charged with a backward tendency towards Ro?ne, and on the other 
hand it is characterized as a bold and free movement forward beyond the 
traditionary bounds of all that is called orthodoxy in Protestantism." 
— p. 400. 

[This, again, is both true and honest. The charge that this new 



APPENDICES. 



theory is " a backward tendency towards Rome" is thus not only ac- 
knowledged, but is deemed an honor. And so, on the other hand, it 
is acknowledged to be " a bold and free movement beyond all that is 
called orthodoxy in Protestantism." Let us, then, have no more denial 
on this point by the disciples of the new theory. The master is above 
the disciple.] 

" Our opponents, comprising four-fifths, if not nine-tenths, of the 
ministry and laity belonging to the Reformed family of Churches, an- 
swer in the negative, and maintain that the doctrine of baptismal re- 
generation is neither Reformed nor Protestant, but Romish." — Merc, 
Rev., April, 1868, p. 182. 

" If it be so that Protestantism shall stand the test in the arbitrament 
of God in history, as being substantially the main bearer of the Chris- 
tian life, it is plain that it cannot do so on the sole basis on which it 
started, or on the basis of what it has since been or now is, but alone 
on the basis of zvhat it has the power of yet becoming.' 1 '' — p. 394. [ On the 
sole basis on which it started, Protestantism cannot stand the test, so 
Dr. Nevin thinks. It is plain, therefoi-e, that he has no faith in it as 
it now stands, " but alone on the basis of what it has the power of yet 
becoming." We must therefore still wait to see what " the things be 
that are yet to come." All is yet a sandy bottom — all uncertainty ; 
no realizing conviction of the passage in Hebrews, xiii. 9, especially 
after the German rendering: Es ist ein k'ostlich Ding dassdas Herz fest 
werde. Is it any wonder, then, when young men are taught that 
Protestantism, on the basis on which it started and on which it has since 
been or now is, is untenable, and that we must therefore look else- 
where, — is it any wonder, after teaching them that they must go back- 
ward (back of the Reformation) — back to the middle ages, and then 
" forward beyond the traditionary bounds of all that is called ortho- 
doxy in Protestantism," — is it any wonder, we ask, that young men 
so taught should not lose faith in Protestantism? and what more 
natural than to catch at the straw of Infallibility which the Romish 
Church throws out to them ? You first remove from under their feet 
the foundation, and then say to them, " But don't you catch at the 
straw ; by-and-by we will perhaps discover some safe boat for us and 
you!" That is miserable comfort, we should say.] 

(Appendix G contains some further statements on this subject.) 

Whilst penning the foregoing sentences, we were led to refer to the 
recent work of that eminently great and good man, who is acknowl- 
edged to have written the ablest work on Systematic Theology in 
America, — we mean Dr. Charles Hodge, of Princeton.* We append 
a few extracts on the philosophical and theological aspects of the new 
theory now under consideration, which will show how they strike such 
a man as Dr. Hodge ; a man who shows, in this learned work, that the 
speculations of ancient and modern times are well understood by him. 
And so also are our new theories. 



* Systematic Theology. By Charles Hodge, D.D., New York, 1873, vol. iii. 



APPENDICES. 



REGENERATION. 

MODERN SPECULATIVE VIEWS ON THIS SUBJECT. 

After saying that modern speculative philosophy had introduced such 
a radical change in the views entertained of the nature of God, His 
relation to the world, of the person and work of Christ, and of the 
application of His redemption for the salvation of men, that one might 
safely say that the ancient and Scriptural forms of these doctrines were 
superseded, and others introduced which could not be understood unless 
one understood their philosophy, and that this brings down the truths 
of the Bible to the form of philosophical dogmas, Dr. Hodge says : 

" We cease to hear of the Holy Ghost, as the third person of the 
Trinity, applying to men the redemption purchased by Christ. 
They teach, First, that there is no dualism in man between soul and 
body. There is but one life. The body is the soul projecting itself 
externally. Without a body there is no soul. Second, that there is 
no real dualism between God and man. The identity between God 
and man is the last result of modern speculation ; and it is the funda- 
mental idea of Christianity. . . . These attempts have resulted, in 
some instances, in avowed Christian Pantheism, as it is called; in 
others, in forms of doctrine so nearly pantheistic as to be hardly dis- 
tinguished from Pantheism itself ; and in all, in a radical modification, 
not only of the theology of the Church as expressed in her received 
standards, but also of the Scriptural form of Christian doctrines, if 
not of their essence. . . . There is no dualism in Christ as be- 
tween soul and body. Neither is there any dualism between Divinity 
and humanity in Him. The Divine and human in His person are one 
life. In being the ideal or perfect man, He is the true God. The 
deification which humanity reached in Christ is not a supernatural act 
on the part of God; it is reached by a natural process of development in 
His people, that is, the Church.* The soteriology [the doctrine of salva- 
tion by Christ] of this system is simple. The soul projects itself in the 
body. They are one life, but the body may be too much for the soul. 

So humanity as a generic life, a form of the life of God, as 
projected externally in the world from Adam onward, has not devel- 
oped itself aright. If left unaided, it would not reach the goal, or 
unfold itself as Divine. A new start, therefore, must be given to it, a 
new commencement made. This is done by a supernatural intervention 
resulting in the production of the person of Christ. In Him Divinity 
assumes the fashion of a man — the existence-form of man; God 
becomes man, and man is God. This renewed entrance, so to speak, 
of God into the world, this special form of Divine-human life, is Chris- 
tianity, which is constantly declared to be ' a life,' ' the life of Christ, 'f 



* The italicizing is our own,*here and onward. 

f [A plain but pious and well-read member of our Church said to me some years 
ago, " For a whole year I listened to the sermons of our new pastor, and heard him 



APPENDICES. 



153 



f a new theanthropic life.' Men become Christians by being par- 
takers of this life, ... by union with the Church and reception 
of the sacraments.* The incarnation of God is continued in the 
Church [is 'perennial']; and this principle of 'Divine-human life' 
descends from Christ to the members of the Church, as naturally and 
as much by a process of organic development, as humanity derived from 
Adam unfolded itself in his descendants. Christ, therefore, saves us, 
not so much by what He did [His sufferings and death, for instance], as 
by what He is. He made no satisfaction to the Divine justice ; no 
expiation for sin. . . . There is, therefore, no justification, no real 
pardon even, in the ordinary sense of the word. . . . Those who 
become partakers of this new principle of life, which is truly human 
and truly Divine, become one with Christ. All the merit, righteous- 
ness, excellence, etc., are our own. They are subjective in us and 
form our character, just as the nature derived from Adam was ours, 
with all its corruptions and infirmities. 

" If asked what is regeneration according to this system, the proper 
answer would probably be, that it is an obsolete term. There is no 
room for the thing usually signified by the word, and no reason for 
retaining the word itself. Regeneration is a work of the Holy Spirit 
as a distinct person or agent. But this system in its integrity does not 
acknowledge the Holy Spirit as a distinct person or agent. And those 
who are constrained to make the acknowledgment of His personality 
are evidently embarrassed by the admission. What the Scriptures and 
the Church ascribe to the Spirit working with the freedom of a personal 
agent when and where He sees fit, this system attributes to the ' the- 
anthropic life' of Christ, working as a new force, according to the 
natural laws of development.! 

" The impression made upon the readers of the modern theologians 
of this school is that made by any other form of philosophical disquisi- 
tion. It has not, and from its nature it cannot have, anything more than 
human authority. This system may be adopted as a matter of opinion, 
but it cannot be an object of faith; and, therefore, it cannot support 



going over the expressions, ' Christianity is not doctrine, not this and not that, but 
life ;' and I still thought he meant by that, that we must show our faith by a godly 
life. And yet he never said a word about repentance, faith, or things of that sort. 
So I once asked him about it, when he smiled at my ignorance and tried to explain 
what it did mean. But for the life of me I could not understand what it was, but I 
thought of 1 Timothy vi. 20." — S.] 

* [To corroborate and intensify the correctness of this delineation of the teachings 
of the new theory as here given by Dr. Hodge, we annex the following two sentences 
from an article on (Baptismal) Regeneration in the Mercersburg Review for January, 
I ^73, by the Rev. W. Rupp, and defended by our Lancaster professors. Speaking 
of regeneration, he says, " That life-breath which God breathed into Adam, when 
he became a living soul, cannot be regarded otherwise than as an emanation from 
the being of God." And then, further on : " In like manner the life of regeneration 
is an emanation, by the Holy Ghost, from Christ's Divine-human life, and yet no 
sensible or material part of His personal being." 

The critical reader will please mark^he expression " emanation" (twice repeated), 
as appertaining to the out-and-out pantheistic school. Yet Mr. Rupp may be un- 
willing to be understood in so bad a sense. But in that case a scientific statement 
ought to be made in strictly scientific form. It certainly both looks and sounds 
strange, to speak mildly. — S.] 

t Mystical Presence (by Dr. Nevin), pp. 225-29. 



154 



APPENDICES. 



the hopes of a soul conscious of guilt. In turning from such writings 
to the word of God, the transition, these theologians would have us 
believe, is from yvdciq to mcrng [from knowledge to faith~\ ; but to the 
consciousness of the Christian it is like the transition from the confusion 
of tongues at Babel, where no man understood his fellow, to the 
symphonious utterance of those ' who spake as they were moved by 
the Holy Ghost.' "—pp. 18-22. 

Referring to those who deny the Scriptural doctrine of the relation 
of God to the world, everything being according to law, ordered, and 
uniform, the same author says : 

" Those who depart from their principles so far as to admit the person 
of Christ to be supernatural in its origin, contend that the supernatural 
in Him becomes natural, and that from Him onward the diffusion of 
spiritual life is by a regular process of development, as simply natural 
as the development of humanity from Adam through all his posterity. 
This is a purely philosophical theory. It has no authority for Christians. 
As it is contrary to the express teaching of the Scriptures, it cannot be 
adopted by those who recognize them as the infallible rule of faith and 
practice. As it contradicts the moral and religious convictions arising 
from the constitution of our nature, it must be hurtful in all its tenden- 
cies, and can be adopted by those only who sacrifice to speculation 
their interior life." — p. 37. 



JUSTIFICATION AND SANCTIFICATION. 
An eminent writer says on this subject : 

"Justification and sanctification should always be discriminated, but 
they must never be disunited. Where they are not distinguished, a 
religious system cannot be clear; and where they are divided, it can 
never be safe. Where they are not distinguished, law and gospel, 
free will and free grace, the merit of man and the righteousness of 
Christ, run into a mass of confusion and disorder. And where they are 
divided, Pharisaical pride and antinomian presumption will be sure to 
follow. Be it remembered, then, that the one regards something done 
for us, the other something done in us. The one is a relative (change 
of our relation to God), the other a personal change. The one is 
perfect at once (justification), the other (sanctification) is gradual. The 
one is derived from the obedience of the Saviour, the other from His 
Spirit. The one gives us a title to heaven, the other a meetness 
(fitness) for it." 

The venerable Dr. A. Alexander, of Princeton, said on his death- 
bed, " All my theology is reduced to the prayer of the publican : God 
be merciful to me a sinner!" 



APPENDICES. 



•55 



John Wesley said on his death-bed to one who referred to the long 
and successful labors of his (Wesley's) life and labors, " I see nothing 
in aught I have done that can be a ground of hope or assurance to me 
but this : 

' I the chief of sinners am, 
But Jesus died for me!'" 

And that was enough. May it be your heart-felt confession, dear reader, 
and mine ! 



X). 

NO HUMAN CONFESSORS. 

The devoted Canon Ryle, a dignitary of the Church of England, and, 
if we mistake not, one of the chaplains of Queen Victoria, in one of 
his tracts on the present disturbed state of the Church in that country 
on account of the gradual introduction of Romish ceremonies, uses 
the following solemn words on the effort to revive the Confessional : 

" We honor the minister's office highly, but we refuse to give it a 
hair's breadth more dignity than we find given it in the word of God. 
We honor ministers as Christ's ambassadors, Christ's messengers, 
Christ's watchmen, helpers of believers' joys, preachers of the word, 
and stewards of the mysteries of God. But we decline to regard them 
as priests, mediators, confessors, and rulers over men's faith, both for 
the sake of their souls and our own. 

" Listen not to those who tell you that evangelical teaching is opposed 
to the exercise of discipline, or heart-examination, or mortification of 
the flesh, or true contrition. Opposed to it ! There never was a more 
baseless assertion. We are entirely favorable to it. This only we 
require, that it shall be carried on in the right way. We approve of a 
Confessional, but it must be the only true one, the Throne of Grace. 
We approve of going to a confessor, but it must be to the true one, 
Christ the Lord. We approve of submitting consciences to a priest, 
but it must be to the great High Priest, Jesus the Son of God. We 
approve of unbosoming our secret sins and seeking absolution, but it 
must be at the feet of the great Head of the Church, and not at the feet 
of one of His weak members. We approve of kneeling to receive 
ghostly counsel, but it must be at the feet of Christ, and not at the feet 
of man. 

" Reader, beware of ever losing sight of Christ's priestly office. 
Glory in His atoning death. Honor Him as your substitute and surety 
on the Cross. Follow Him as your Shepherd. Hear His voice as 
your Prophet. Obey Him as your King. But in all your thoughts about 
Christ, let it be often before your mind, that He alone is your High 
Priest, and that He has deputed His priestly office to no order of men 
in the world. This is the office of Christ which Satan labors above 
all to obscure. It is the neglect of this office which leads to every 



156 



APPENDICES. 



kind of error. It is the remembrance of this which is the best safe- 
guard against the plausible teaching of the Church of Rome. Once 
right about this office, you will never greatly err in the matter of the 
confession of sin. You will know to whom confession ought to be made ; 
and to know that rightly is no slight thing.'''' 

THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE BELIEVER'S JOY. 

" A few years since, a drawing representing the crucified Saviour was 
found upon the walls of the ancient palace of the Caesars in Rome. 
The rude sketch speaks to us from the midst of the times of the struggle 
between Christianity and heathenism, and is a memorial of the manner 
in which the minds of men were then stirred. Some heathen servant 
of the emperor is taunting his Christian fellow-servant with this con- 
temptuous sign. The relic belongs to about the year A.D. 200, and is 
by far the most ancient crucifix we know of. But this, the oldest 
crucifix, is an ironical one. It is a caricature of Christ, before which 
a Christian stands worshiping, and it bears the inscription, ' Alexamenos 
(the name of the derided Christian) worshiping his God.' We see 
that the crucified Saviour and the preaching of" the Cross were the scorn 
of the world. In the great struggle between heathenism and Chris- 
tianity, the Cross was the sign of victory. ... If Christianity is to 
conquer the world, it will only do so as the preaching of the Cross, and 
not by concessions to the natural reason. ... If we would truly 
understand God, we must make the Cross our starting-point, for it is 
here that His holiness and His love are found united. If we would 
have communion with God, we must seek it at the Cross, for it is here 
that judgment is executed on the sin which separates us from God, and 
here that the love is manifested which unites us with Him. So long, 
therefore, as there are Christians on earth, — and that will be to the end 
of time, — their confession will be, < He who died upon the Cross is 
my Beloved.' " — Luthardt. 

"O sacred Head, now wounded, 

With grief and shame weighed down, 
Now scornfully surrounded 

With thorns, Thine only crown, — 
O sacred Head, what glory, 

What bliss, till now was Thine ! 
Yet, though despised and gory, 

I joy to call Thee mine." — 

(Paul Gerhardt : translated by Dr. James W. Alexander.) 



APPENDICES. 



157 



23- 

Dr. Luthardt says, " He [God] has His work in the souls of chil- 
dren as well as in the souls of adults. Yet we grant that this commu- 
nion with God must become a matter of consciousness [experience]. 
And it is for this reason that we follow Baptism by Confirmation, — not 
to complete Baptism, for it is complete already ; not to renew it, for it 
is a beginning once for all ; but that the baptized may express, with his 
own mouth, that confession of faith upon which he was baptized, that 
his covenant with God in Baptism may be the covenant of his con- 
scious choice, and that he may receive the blessing at the very time of 
his moral development and his moral danger. With Confirmation we 
combine the first reception of the Lord's Supper, and consequently full 
membership in the Christian Church." (Lecture ix. pp. 241-2.) 



IP. 

[The following theses on the ministerial office were proposed by the 
eminent Court preacher and councillor of the High Consistory, Dr. 
Schwartz, of Saxony, before a convention of ministers, several years 
ago, and by them were adopted. It is seldom that we see so much valu- 
able matter compressed into so few words. We ask a careful study of 
this able statement.] 

THE OFFICE OF THE EVANGELICAL MINISTRY IN ITS 
RELATION TO THE CHURCH. 

1. The office of the ministry exists not for its own sake, neither out- 
side, nor before, nor over the Church ; but it grows out of her, stands 
in her, and labors with her, as the central point of the organized 
Church. 

2. It does not operate in a saving way by the power of an institution, 
but alone through a living and working (werkthatigen) faith of the 
office-bearer. 

3. It is not founded, nevertheless designed (gewollt) by God, pro- 
ceeds not immediately but mediately, not in a supernatural but in a 
natural way, from Him, and is in no other sense of Divine origin than 
as every higher organization from an inward necessity is such, — as is 
the office of teaching and governing. 

4. It is not founded by Christ, although designed by Him, as He 
specially called only the Apostles, furnished with His Spirit, merely 
founding the Kingdom of God, but not organizing the Church. 

5. It is exercised by the commission and authority of the Church, 
but is not on that account dependent upon the variable views and 



158 



APPENDICES. 



wishes of the many, but rather under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, 
who is the only Lord of the Church, and who leads her into all Truth. 

6. The idea of the Universal Priesthood, as it was again revived by 
Luther (and other Reformers), contains the truth, that the office of the 
ministry does not rest upon a difference of the quality, but only upon 
a distribution of labor, or, that there is not a special class [Stand), but 
only a spiritual calling (Beruf). 

7. The ministerial office includes, as its necessary prerequisites, these 
three things : (a) an inward call or a spiritual fitness ; (b) the prepara- 
tion or education for it ; (c) the external call or appointment. 

8. The inward call, although in different degrees, belongs to all the 
members of the Church, and is the foundation of the Universal Priest- 
hood; the education and external call belong only to a part, and are 
the basis of the regular office. 

9. Fanatics and sectarians disregard education and an outward 
call; State theologians and hierarchists disregard the gifts of the 
Spirit. 

10. The ministerial office is an office of the Spirit, and therefore 
is effective only in a spiritual — that is to say, in a real and free — way, not 
by outward constraint or coercion. 

11. There is a pastoral office, not merely an office of preaching, but 
one in deed, consisting not merely in proclaiming the gospel, but also 
in leading the congregation by an exemplary evangelical life. 

12. The sermon, the administration of the sacraments, and* the office 
of the Keys (the exercise of Christian discipline), are only different 
methods and applications in preaching the gospel. 

THE CHURCH IN THE OLD AND IN THE NEW 
TESTAMENT. 

The Church historian Dr. A. Neander, in his preface to a book by 
the Rev. Mr. Coleman (August, 1843), says: 

" It is of the utmost importance to keep ever in view the difference 
between the economy of the Old Testament and that of the New. The 
neglect of this has given rise to the grossest errors, and to divisions, by 
which those who ought to be united together in the bonds of Christian 
love have been sundered from each other. In the Old Testament, 
everything relating to the Kingdom of God was estimated by outward 
forms and promoted by specific external rites. In the New, every- 
thing is made to depend upon what is internal and spiritual. Other 
foundation, as the Apostle Paul has said, can no man lay than is laid. 
Upon this the Christian Church at first was grounded, and upon this 
alone, in all time to come, must it be reared anew and compacted to- 
gether. Faith in Jesus of Nazareth, the Saviour of the world, and 
union with Him, a participation in that salvation which cometh through 
Him, — this is that inward principle, that unchangeable foundation, on 
which the Christian Church essentially rests. But whenever, instead 
of making the existence of the Church to depend on this inward prin- 
ciple alone, the necessity of some outward form is asserted as an indis- 
pensable means of grace, we readily perceive that the purity of its char- 



APPENDICES. 



159 



acter is impaired. The spirit of the Old Testament is commingled with 
that of the New." 

Dr. Neander, in the same preface, says : " When, however, the doc- 
trine is (as it gradually gained currency in the third century) that the 
bishops are by Divine right the head of the Church, and invested with 
the government of the same; that they are the successors of the Apostles, 
and by this succession inherit apostolical authority ; that they are the 
medium through which, in consequence of that ordination which they 
have received merely in an outward manner, the Holy Ghost in all 
time to come must be transmitted* to the Church, — when this becomes 
the doctrine of the Church, we certainly must perceive in these assump- 
tions a strong corruption of the purity of the Christian system. It is a 
carnal perversion of the true idea of the Christian Church. It is fall- 
ing back into the spirit of the Jewish religion. Instead of the Chris- 
tian idea of a Church based on inward principles of communion, and 
extending itself by means of these, it presents us with the image of one, 
like that under the Old Testament, resting in outward ordinances, and 
by external rites seeking to promote the propagation of the Kingdom 
of" God. This entire perversion of the original view of the Christian 
Church was itself the origin of the whole system of the Roman Catho- 
lic religion, — the germ from which sprang the popery of the dark 
ages." 



GK 

HOW THE NEW THEORY HAS LED TO ROME. 

A FRIEND at a distance has sent us the following extract from a letter 
from one of the Reformed ministers who, under the influence of Mer- 
cersburg teaching, have been landed in the Roman Church, which 
strongly confirms and illustrates our position referred to in its 
proper place, and hence it is proper and right to give it a place here. 
He says : 

" The report on the state of religion at the Synod of Danville was 
adopted nem. con. (Dr. Nevin being reported ... to have called 
it a 'glorious' report). . . . The Messenger unwittingly speaks 
one true word in reference to certain ' perverts' giving up the active 
duties of the ministry, or laboring in it with only half a heart. The 
reason was that Mercersburg cut the sinews of their strength by destroy- 
ing their faith in Protestantism. So it was with and myself. So 

it was with and and others. . . . used to say (and 

others repeated it), ' Dr. Nevin has ha?nstrung his horses, atid then 
says to them, Now, horses, go and work /' " 

We regard this testimony from one of the "perverts" as important 
and significant. It is the same that was given to us by one of them 
twenty years ago, and it opens to us a view of the process by which 
their minds were led away from the faith of their fathers into the dismal 
and dreary notions of Romanism. We can see, too, that this description 



i6o 



APPENDICES, 



is true. It was a legitimate effect of the system we have been trying to 
lay open to the public gaze of the Church. The childish outcry that 
this is testimony from men who are now Roman Catholics, won't do. 
They were on their way thither for a long time, and when some of us 
said so it was cried down as slander. They carried the seeds in them for 
years, and they merely say now what they always did, that they were 
taught in a way that made them dissatisfied with Protestantism. That 
is the truth in a nutshell, and it cannot be successfully gainsaid. 

" Irenseus," in the Messenger of October 8, 1873, says that the 
opposition to " Nevinism" was as much in fault in leading some of our 
ministers to Rome as was the " Mercersburg-Lancaster School ;" and he 
argues more truthfully, but for his cause not more wisely, than some 
others. His argument is, that if those who were "afflicted by a Romanizing 
mania had been allowed quietly to go on without opposition, they 
would have remained in the Church ; but, finding powerful opposing 
elements at work which might put an end to that 'mania,' they pre- 
ferred to depart." Just so. Allow the men to go on " developing" 
their " Romanizing mania" at pleasure, as the Puseyites in England 
are doing (and "Irenseus" says Puseyism is a "parallel" to "Nevin- 
ism"), and the Reformed Church, with a comfortable support, will be 
good enough for them. Why should they leave the Reformed Church 
if she is weak and good-natured enough to allow those smitten with 
the " Romanizing mania" to eat her bread, and, besides that, to brow- 
beat and smite her children because they will not take the infection 
of the Pontine marshes near the Tiber? The reasoning is well taken ; 
but a shrewder man would not have " taken" it. 



ZE3I. 

EXEGETICAL NOTES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN. 

BY DR. SCHAFF, IN LANGE'S COMMENTARY* 

The readers of these pages will, we are sure, thank us for the fol- 
lowing well-matured and instructive notes on various important pas- 
sages from the pen of Dr. Schaff. No one, probably, is better qualified 
than he to appreciate the new theory which we regard as erroneous, 
and which these expositions, without any apparent aim or design, 
nullify or disprove. We avail ourselves, in part, of the judicious 
grouping of these extracts by the Rev. Dr. Bomberger, in his Reformed 



* The Gospel according to John. By John Peter Lange, D.D., Professor of The- 
ology in the University of Bonn (Prussia). Translated from the German, revised, 
enlarged, and edited, by Ph. Schaff, D.D., Professor of Theology in the Union The- 
ological Seminary, New York. 1871 ; Scribner & Co. ; royal 8vo, pp. 654. We 
consider the volume of Lange's Commentary on John, and that on Matthew, the 
most valuable of all the New Testament volumes as far as published. 



APPENDICES. 



161 



Church Monthly for 1 87 1, together with some remarks from his own 
pen. 

" The distinctive characteristics of the Gospel of John," says Dr. 
Bomberger, " invest it with special interest and importance for some 
of the leading points of theological discussion or controversy in our 
day. It is to this Gospel, mainly, that the advocates of theanthropism 
appeal, as if confident that it furnishes full support to their theory of 
an immanent organic union of the Godhead with humanity. So, too, 
when they claim that Christ and the Church are so substantially one, 
that the Church is but Christ perpetuating His own personal life 
through the Church in the world, and so redeeming the race, they 
mainly rely on John for proof. Here, too, they think they find the 
strongest justification of their peculiar sacramental views, baptismal 
regeneration, and the real communication of the substance of Christ's 
glorified humanity in and through the Holy Supper. And no one can 
deny that there are detached passages in this Gospel which may, in 
sound at least, seem to favor these and other similar ultra false church 
views. 

"As it is by John that the Spirit reveals more fully than in either of 
the other Gospels the mysterious tri-personality of the glorious God- 
head, so it is here we find set forth, in the most explicit terms, the vital 
relation of believers to God in Christ. This is naturally and neces- 
sarily done in figurative language; hence the temptation for minds of 
a speculative mystic turn to misapprehend and misinterpret what is 
said, and to let themselves be led, by their own error, into pantheistic 
mists. The Gospel is not a fault. It presents the truth plainly enough 
to prevent such false conceptions of the matter. Those falling under 
the power of such conceptions are betrayed by their own deceptive 
philosophy and indulged theosophic dreams. 

" All this, however, adds greatly to the interest as well as responsi- 
bility of the expositor's work. And any one duly competent for the 
sacred task, not only by his learning, but still more by his being in 
true spiritual harmony with the spirit of John, and especially of Him 
on whose inmost bosom the beloved disciple so confidingly reposed — 
any one so fitted for the work could not fail to find the work as con- 
genial as it is solemn. 

" This Gospel affords such a commentator abundant opportunities for 
exposing and correcting some of the most specious and ensnaring 
errors by which the truth has ever been perverted, as well as for clearly 
exhibiting and defending the most vital doctrines of Christianity. It 
thus becomes at once a severe test of his own evangelical orthodoxy 
regarding fundamental articles of faith. And in proportion to his 
fidelity to that faith in the performance of his task, will he be sure to 
receive the warm approval of all who love it, and to draw down upon 
himself the censure and condemnation of those who have departed 
from it. 

" Dr. Schaff has clearly felt this, and more deeply, no doubt, than 
we can tell it, in the preparation of the volume before us. He proves 
it by the labor so cheerfully bestowed upon the work in large voluntary 
additions to the original. He knew the special demands of the theo- 
logical jatitude in which it would circulate. Circumstances had made 
14* L 



APPENDICES. 



him more familiar than, probably, any other American theologian, with 
speculations of the most perilous character. These, though as yet con- 
fined to very narrow limits of influence, might, by their novelty and 
speciousness and ' show of wisdom,' spread with mischievous power 
among unsuspecting but novelty -loving disciples of theology. Hence 
the American editor felt called by duty freely to enlarge upon Dr. 
Lange's comments by numerous notes. These notes are critical, exe- 
getical, and doctrinal, and add greatly, for us at least, to the value of 
the German work. 

" The added doctrinal notes have special significance, as some of 
the fullest of them touch upon important questions now at issue among 
us. We can cite only a few of them. But they will suffice to show 
our readers both what we mean, and why we set so much store by 
them. 

" First, on the relation of God in Christ to creation and the world, 
Dr. S chaff declares : 

"'The Scripture doctrine of creation differs: I, from Pantheism, 
which teaches an eternal world, and confounds God with the world ; 
2, from Dualism, or the eternity of matter antagonistic to God ; 3, from 
the emanation theory /* 4, from Deism, which asserts the creation but 
separates it from the Creator; 5, from Materialism, which makes matter 
the mother of the spirit and is alike degrading to God and man' (p. 63 
of Comm.). 

" The first and third points in the above quotation merit special 
thought. We have italicized the third, which the editor does not 
define, and added in the foot-note what we regard as its true import. 

" Secondly^ on the Incarnation, it is gratifying to hear Dr. S. affirm so 
distinctly: 

"'The Logos assumed, not an individual man or a single human 
personality, but human nature (of course this individually, — B.), into 
union with His pre-existent Divine personality. . . . It is not the 
flesh as opposed to the spirit, that is here ("the Word became flesh"), 
but human nature as distinct from the Divine. . . . The term 
("only-begotten," chapter i. 14) refers back to v. 12, and marks the 
difference between Christ and the believers. I, He is the only Son 
in a sense in tvhich there is no other; they are many ; 2, He is Son 
from eternity; they become children in time; 3, He is Son by nature; 
they are made sons by grace and adoption ; 4, He is of the same 
essence with the Father; they are of a different substance. I?i other 
words, His is a metaphysical primitive and co-essential Sonship, 
theirs only an ethical and derived Sonship.'' 

" In the passages we have italicized above, it must be cheering to all 
evangelical readers to note how distinctly Dr. S. reiterates the old 
faith, and repudiates all thought of such an organic conjunction of the 
eternal Word with humanity as involves a perpetual transmission of 
the substance of the life of the Word incarnate to the race regenerated 
by such transmission. 

" Thirdly, In the third chapter of the Gospel, which contains the con- 



* " Which teaches that all life is but a flowing forth of the substance of the life of 
God into things so created and an essential part of that Divine life, by an organic 
process.— B." 



APPENDICES. 



163 



versation of our Lord with Nicodemus, Dr. Schaff finds a fitting oppor- 
tunity to affirm and vindicate the old evangelical doctrine concerning 
Baptism, and he faithfully improves the opportunity. After remarking 
that ' true religion in the soul begins with a personal conviction of sin 
and guilt, . . . without which all efforts to convert a man are in 
vain,' he adds : 

" ' It is characteristic of the idealism and mysticism of John that 
in his Gospel he gives no account of the institution of the Church and 
the sacraments. But, anticipating the visible rite, he presents in ch. 3 
the idea of the new birth which is symbolized in Christian Baptism, 
together with the idea of " the kingdom of God" which is the internal 
and abiding essence of the Church. So in ch. 6 he gives the general 
idea of vital union with Christ, which underlies the sacrament of the 
Lord's Supper.' 

" 'Baptism and Regeneration. These, in their relation to each other, 
receive earnest consideration under ch. 3. Dr. Schaff's notes upon 
them are full and explicit. And they were evidently written, not hastily, 
as Dr. Apple of Mercersburg says, but with careful thought. This will 
be evident from the following quotations : 

" 4 Regeneration is a creative act of God the Holy Spirit, whereby a 
new spiritual life from above is implanted in man, through the means 
of grace, especially the preaching of" the gospel ; like the natural birth, 
it can occur but once. . . . As to its origin and mode of operation, it 
is a mystery, like the natural generation and birth, but a mystery mani- 
fest in its effects to all who have spiritual eyes to see ; it meets us as a 
fact in every true Christian or child of God, who is as sure of the higher 
life of Christ in his own soul as he is of his natural existence.' In 
another view of the subject, yet one in entire harmony with the fore- 
going passage, he speaks of regeneration as ' a moral new birth.' 

" Having thus defined the true idea of regeneration, the doctrine of 
baptism itself receives attention in a note under verse 5, — ' born of 
water and the Spirit,' etc. Dr. S. says, « The key to the sense of the 
passage is furnished by the declaration of the Baptist that he baptized 
only with water, but Christ would baptize with the Holy Ghost (i. 33), 
and by the passage of Paul where he connects Christian baptism as 
"the bath of regeneration" with the renewal of the Holy Ghost, and 
yet distinguishes both (Tit. hi. 5).' Other illustrative passages are 
cited, and the frequent figurative use of the term water in the Old 
Testament referred to. Dr. Schaff then adds : 

" 1 The idea which underlies all these baptisms is essentially the same. 
We would, therefore, not confine " water" to any particular form of 
baptism, but (with Lange, see below, No. 5) extend it to all preparatory 
illustrations; nor would we refer it directly to the sacrament as an 
external act or rite, but (with Olshausen) to the idea rather, — of which 
the cleansing with water is the symbolic expression, — just as in ch. 6 
we have an exposition of the general idea of the holy communion 
before the sacrament was instituted in which it comes to its full em- 
bodiment. The idea underlying all forms of baptism is the forgiveness 
of sins on condition of repentance. This is the negative part of regener- 
ation, while the new life communicated by the Holy Spirit is the 
positive part, or regeneration proper. So Peter, in his pentecostal ser- 



164 



APPENDICES. 



mon, represents the matter when he calls upon his hearers, " Repent 
and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, 
and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost" (Acts ii. 38). The 
chief matter is, of course, the positive part, the gift of the Holy Spirit, 
who is the efficient cause, the creative and vivifying agent of regenera- 
tion, and who alone can make the word and the sacrament effective. 
Hence the Spirit alone is mentioned in verses 6 and 8. The omission 
of water here is as significant as the omission of baptism in the negative 
clause of Mark xvi. 16, where the condition of salvation and the reason 
of damnation are laid down. This is a sufficient hint that the necessity 
of water baptism to salvation is not absolute, but relative only. The 
penitent thief passed into Paradise without water baptism. Corne- 
lius was regenerated before he was baptized, and many martyrs in the 
early ages died for Christ before they had a chance to receive the 
sacrament. It is possible to have the substance without the form, the 
baptism of the Spirit without the baptism of the water ; as it is quite 
common on the other hand to be baptized with water and have the Chris- 
tian name without the Christia)t spirit and life. The Apostles them- 
selves (except Paul) never received Christian baptism, for Christ 
Himself, who alone could have administered it to them, did not baptize 
(iv. 2). In their case the pentecostal effusion of the Spirit was suffi- 
cient. We are bound to God's appointed means of grace, but God is 
free, and the Spirit " bloweth where it listeth." ' In another note he 
still further emphasizes the vitally important truth brought out so strongly 
above, by declaring, 'The necessity of regeneration and faith to salva- 
tion is absolute, the necessity of baptism or anything else is merely 
relative. Only unbelief, that is, the rejection of the gospel, with or 
without baptism, condemns.' 

" Dr. T. G. Apple, as it were speaking for Mercersburg theology in 
its latest development, takes Dr. Schaff to task for uttering sentiments 
like these. He charges Dr. S. with error in exegesis (!) and in 
theology. Of course, then, by Dr. A.'s confession, Mercersburg holds 
essentially different views. This we readily believe. Then the simple 
question is, Which is Reformed doctrine? which is true? The doctrine 
as so explicitly and frankly avowed in his commentary, or the views 
advocated by Mercersburg ? Few readers will probably hesitate, any 
more than we do, to prefer the old faith to the new. 

"Fourthly. The Lord's Supper, etc. Under the sixth chapter of the 
Gospel Dr. Schaff supplies some very valuable notes touching the 
significance of the Lord's Supper and doctrines connected with it. We 
reluctantly limit ourselves to a few brief quotations, which, however, 
will enable the reader to catch the general drift of the comments. As 
a clear indication of his ruling convictions, Dr. S. remarks, on vi. 29, 
upon ' the distinction between believing Christ, which is simply an 
intellectual assent to an historical fact, . . . and believing in Christ 
as an object of confidence and hope, which implies a vital union with 
Him. This is both a work of Divine grace and the highest work of 
man. . . . Faith is the greatest act of freedom towards God, for by it 
He gives Himself, and more man cannot do. . . . Schleiermacher 
calls this passage the clearest and most significant declaration that all 
eternal life proceeds from nothing less than faith in Christ.' 1 



APPENDICES. 



" Again, on vi. 44 : ' The natural inability of man to come to Christ, 
however, is not physical nor intellectual, but moral and spiritual. It 
is an unwillingness. No change of mental organization, no new faculty, 
is required, but a radical change of the heart and will. This is effected 
by the Holy Ghost, but the providential drawing of the Father prepares 
the way for it.'' 

" Regarding the sacramental interpretation of vi. 51, etc., Dr. Schaff 
holds, that whilst the passage does not refer directly to the Lord's 
Supper, it sets forth the idea of it. He says : 

" ' Jf participation in the Lord's Supper were a necessary pre-reqidsite 
of salvation, Christ would undoubtedly have said so when He instituted 
the ordinance. But throughout the gospel, and especially in this dis- 
course, He makes FAITH the only condition of eternal life. He first 
exhibits Himself as the Bread of Life, and promises eternal life to every 
one who eats this bread, that is, who believes in Him. He then holds 
out the same promise to all those who eat His flesh and drink His 
blood, which, consequently, must be essentially the same act as believing. 
The discourse, therefore, refers to a broader and deeper fact, zvhich 
precedes and zinderlies the sacrament, and of which the sacrament is a 
significant sign and seal, viz., personal union of the believing sotd with 
Christ, and a living appropriation of His atoning sacrifice. . . . We 
must distinguish between a spiritual manducation of Christ by faith, 
and a sacramental manducation; the former alone is essential to ever- 
lasting life, and is the proper subject of the discourse. John omits an 
account of the institution both of baptism and the Lord's Supper, 
. . . but he gives those profound discourses of Christ which explain 
the spiritual meaning of the sacraments, namely, the idea of regenera- 
tion, which is signed and sealed in baptism (ch. 3), and the idea of 
personal communion with Him, which is celebrated in the Lord's Supper 
(ch. 6). This suggests a very important doctrinal inference, viz., that 
the spiritual reality of regeneration and union with Christ is not so 
bound to the external sacramental sign that it cannot be enjoyed with- 
out that sign. We must obey God's ordinances, but God is free, and 
we should bless whom He blesses. High sacramentarianism is con- 
trary to the teaching of Christ, according to St. John.' 

" Strongly as we feel tempted to multiply such declarations as these, 
so fully in harmony with Apostolic teaching and the common faith of 
Evangelical Christendom, and just as directly opposed to all Popish 
and Puseyite perversions of the gospel, we must not trespass upon our 
pages further than to add the following : 

" ' Mark, also, that faith, and nothing else, is laid down here, and in 
this whole discourse (comp. v. 40 : and chap. 3, 15, 16), as the condition 
of eternal life. The eating of Christ's flesh and the drinking of His blood, 
to be consistent with this, is only a stronger form of expressing the same 
idea of a real personal appropriation of Christ by faith. This refutes all 
forms of ecclesiasticism which throw any kind of obstruction between 
the soul and Christ as an essential condition of salvation, whether it be 
the- authority of Pope, or Council, or Creed, or system of theology, or 
the intercession of saints, or good works of our own. Salvation de- 
pends solely and exclusively upon personal union with Christ; all 
other things, however important in their place, are subordinate to this. 



APPENDICES. 



Without faith in Christ there can be no salvation for any sinner; this 
is the exclusiveness of the gospel ; but with faith in Christ there is 
salvation for all, of whatever sect or name. This is charity.' 

" Enough has now been said by us and quoted from the volume before 
us, to commend it strongly to all earnest students of the Bible. Al- 
though this commentary exhibits great learning, and must prove most 
helpful to the advanced scholar, it is also adapted to general use. 
Every thoughtful layman, given to any proper study of the Scriptures, 
can learn much from it, and would find most of its pages sufficiently 
plain for practical instruction. 

" To students of theology in our schools of training for the ministry, 
this volume, with the others of the series, will afford assistance which 
they can find nowhere else. And those especially who may be in any 
peril of High-Church sacramentarianism would find it one of the surest 
safeguards against the danger besetting them. The sincere thanks of 
the Church are due to Dr. Schaff for the fidelity and courage with 
which he has done his work." 

[From the foregoing lucid exposition, many of our readers will not 
fail to be reminded of the contrast between it and the forced and 
unusual explanation which is frequently given from the pulpit by some 
brethren to this beautiful chapter of the " disciple whom Jesus loved." 
We have on two occasions heard prominent brethren of the new views 
quoting, for instance, from the sixth chapter of John, the verses from 
fifty-three to fifty-nine, " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man," 
etc., and then giving the explanation that in the Lord's Supper the 
very body and blood of Christ was partaken, and that just as these 
words stand there ; that " Christ does not stop to give any explanation 
to these words" (we quote verbatim from one brother), even when objec- 
tions were made to such phraseology ; adding that " the popular view 
of the modern Churches on this point was ' Rationalism of the baldest 
kind.' " In both cases verse sixty-three was not only not quoted, but not 
the most distant allusion was made to it ; whilst that verse, in connection 
with the one following, is the very key to the proper understanding of 
the chapter. " The eating of Christ's flesh, and the drinking of His 
blood, is only a stronger form of expressing the same idea of a real 
personal appropriation of Christ by faith." If this is Rationalism, then 
may God give us a large measure of it !] 



I- 

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC SYSTEM. 

FROM DR. DORNER'S ARTICLE. 

We regard the essay of Prof. J. A. Dorner, D.D., which he read 
at the Evangelical Alliance in New York, on the hifallibility of the Pope, 
which is now a dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, as the ablest paper 
we have ever perused on that subject. It is a perfect piece of mosaic, — 



APPENDICES. 



thoroughly and compactly put together by the hand of a master-artist. 
It does not content itself with combating the mere outer scaf- 
folding of popery; it is no skirmishing with small arms upon the 
turrets and pinnacles of the Vatican, as the manner of some is, but 
it takes us into its very centre and points out every stone in the decep- 
tive structure, and how and why these stones are thus and so inti- 
mately constructed and fitted together to produce certain ends and 
results. As many of the readers of this work may not have seen the 
essay, we will not confine our extracts merely to those few paragraphs 
(at the close) which bear more directly on the subject under considera- 
tion in these pages. 

The following are the introductory words of Dr. Dorner, which 
show us at once the spirit of the man : 

" It is a righteous indignation which is felt against the Council of 
the Vatican, that it should sanction a dogma of such fearful and far- 
reaching importance as the Infallibility of the Pope; and it is the 
duty of pure and evangelical Christianity to contend against its doc- 
trine and life. But in order to contend successfully we must under- 
stand our adversaries, must discern the roots of the errors, which are 
powerful only in that they are connected with great truths. And again, 
in order to contend as Christians, we must strive with sorrow and 
sympathy, with that love which would have our brethren likewise in 
possession of the truth, and which does not proudly exalt itself above 
the communions, but is mindful of our own infirmity and sin, 
which, manifold and contradictory as it appears, is yet fundamentally 
one ; and it is just so with error. 

" In this spirit I would treat both parts of my theme, in order that we 
may strengthen one another in the common joy of the pure gospel, 
whose light has been restored by the Reformation, fruitful in blessings, 
as the mother of us all. 

THE ERROR OF THE INFALLIBILITY DOGMA. 

..." But, nevertheless, we cannot justly understand this powerful 
error without seeing its connection with Christian truths whose cari- 
cature it is. We cannot master it entirely until we clearly and purely 
apprehend the evangelical truth of which it is the counterpart. The 
Infallibility of the Pope could not have become a dogma without the 
consent of the bishops. Why did they yield ? not only those who for 
a long time had acted as mere servants and menials of the Pope, not 
only those accustomed to regard religion as a mere mechanical cere- 
monial service, whilst, without astonishment, they added this dogma to 
other dogmas, yea, merely wondered why others regarded the matter 
as serious — but other bishops likewise, of more earnest spirit and 
deeper religious interests ? Why did the German bishops particularly 
submit themselves ? At first, part of them bravely resisted. At the 
beginning, they, not less than the Old Catholics, drew back with horror 
from this dogma, as a mystery of lies, which, after it had secretly 
matured in Rome, suddenly stepped forth before the world with 
shamelessness and arrogance. But their opposition became weaker 
and more lukewarm, until at last they capitulated with resignation. I 



APPENDICES. 



shall not acquit them of cowardice and fear of man ; but the human 
heart is deep and strong in self-deceptions and artifices. The entire 
episcopal order would not have submitted themselves with so much 
unanimity had they not supposed that only in this way could they pre- 
serve great Christian possessions. 

" (b.) This infallibilism is a machine well calculated to compel obedi- 
ence, nominal and real, to an appearance, a phantom, of unity; but it 
likewise renders the original substance of Christianity unsafe and un- 
certain, and robs it of its internal redemptive value. For in accord- 
ance with this system the substance of Christianity is essentially in- 
different, if only this one thing is maintained, the recognition of the 
formal authority of the Roman oracle (consequently of the Divine form), 
that formal authority is thus invested with the Divine right of pro- 
viding whatever it thinks best with the Divine stamp of truth ; that is, 
that the whole tendency of modern Catholicism is to make the entire 
substance of Christianity questionable or worthless by the form in 
which all value is placed. 

" (d.) What is assurance without truth ? Error can never give assur- 
ance of itself, but merely unsafe, fluctuating opinion ; for our spirit is 
destined for the truth, in which alone it finds its home, its rest, and its 
peace. We cannot make the truth ; must accept it as it is and as it 
proves itself to be by its ability to give us full and Divine assurance of 
itself. Now the Pope would make truth to be truth, so indeed that 
he holds and claims that what he speaks is inspired ; and not only is 
he involved in the arbitrariness of subjectivism, but likewise all those 
who obey him ; for their arbitrary will elected him to be the head and 
oracle of the Church. While he uses his arbitrary will to command 
and govern, his Church uses its freedom to renounce freedom and 
abdicate it. Both are alike arbitrary, both are equally guilty. 

" (e.) The assurance respecting Christianity sought in this way flees 
from us. And it is the same with the unity of the Church, as we have 
seen. What is the unity of the Church without truth? It is a formal- 
ism. The dictatorship of the one and the obedience of the other may 
constitute an ecclesiastical empire having the external appearance of 
unity ; but without the truth and the spirit it is a hollow mockery, an 
empty pretense. Such an ecclesiastical body lacks the immediate 
communion of its members with the living God, and is a dualism 
throughout. 

" (f.) How very different that unity of the Church which is constituted 
and cherished by the word of the Spirit and the truth ! It is peaceable, 
friendly, and salutary to all the institutions of nature, such as mar- 
riage, the family, and the State. But the empire of the Pope desires 
to be a spiritual empire above all States, and yet is itself only a form 
of government indued with almost all the attributes of the State, even 
the power of coercion, thereby becoming hurtful to religion, which 
can only thrive in the atmosphere of freedom, and is moreover hostile 
to the State, which is conscious of its office and endeavors to realize 
its own idea. For the empire of the Pope is a government which 
would pervade entire Christendom and all of its States, supreme above 



APPENDICES. 



169 



them all even in external affairs; a second State in every State, so 
that it must sooner or later come in collision with every one of them 
that does not submit itself. It is a great error, as we have seen in 
Germany, to suppose that the State can avoid this conflict by not 
troubling itself about this Church. If the State does not trouble it- 
self about this Church, it will trouble itself about the State, and ap- 
propriate more and more the State's prerogatives. 

" Since the Pope henceforth takes this position, a great change awaits 
the Catholic Church, demanding our deepest sympathy. For ought 
it not to grieve us that so large a portion of Christendom which Christ 
has redeemed should again fall so low as that, under the name and 
appearance of unity, the Romish Church should become a despotism, 
the most absolute monarchy ever known? Herein, likewise, is in- 
volved a rupture of unity, a dualism, by which the uniformity and 
unity of the members in participation in the Holy Spirit is done away 
with, since the wisdom and will of the Holy Spirit are said to concen- 
trate themselves in one member, while the others, called by the Apostle 
Peter « a royal priesthood,' are said not to have their immediate part 
in the Holy Spirit, but only through the high priest. Does not this 
renew the distinction of the religion of priests before Christ, with a 
boldness hitherto unknown ? What a disunion such a unity brings 
within the body of the Roman Catholic Church itself! Christ says 
that the water he will give is to be a well of waters springing up in 
the believer himself unto everlasting life. The new dogma will no 
longer have the Holy Spirit to dwell independently in the members ; 
they are not to have wells of life, streaming forth from the mysterious 
depths of the water of the Divine Spirit and word ; but merely pas- 
sive channels for the water which is to flow forth from the Tiber to 
Rome to enrich the globe. What then is the unity of Christians with 
one another, for which our Lord prays in His intercessory prayer, if 
Christian brotherhood is merely a communion in servitude and non- 
age under an infallible Pope ? Not less painful is the fact that this 
dogma erects a new wall of separation between the Roman Catholics 
and the rest of Christendom, not only against us and the Orientals, but 
likewise against the promise of the Lord respecting the one fold and 
the one Shepherd, by which He did not mean a Pope. 

NOMINAL PROTESTANTISM. 

"We have thus been brought to the consideration of evangelical 
Christianity. And, that we may not give ourselves over to ecclesias- 
tical pride, we must not forget the evils of nominal Protestantism ex- 
isting among us, against which we have to contend. 

" Evangelical Christianity is the freeborn daughter of the Reforma- 
tion. It has reconciled the principles of Authority and Freedom in 
the moral and religious sphere. For the gospel proves itself to evan- 
gelical faith as a power of God ; the believer is overcome in his in- 
telligence, will, and feelings by the spiritual power of redeeming truth 

15 



170 



APPENDICES. 



in Christ, and thus has first of all an assurance of personal salvation in 
Christ, a subjective knowledge of himself as redeemed, and then at 
the same time an objective knowledge of the Redeemer, of His Divine 
power and grace. This victory of truth as light and life is at the 
same time victory over doubt, skepticism, disunion, and enmity with 
God. In one word, man by faith is restored to unity with himself and 
God, to unity of Christian character, and that is the foundation of all 
true unity of men in the Church. For how could there be unity of 
the Church if its members have chaotic and internally discordant ele- 
ments within their own persons ? And, on the other hand, how can 
those who are born of God refrain from loving their kindred of the 
Divine seed?" 

[After showing that unless there is constant renewal of the truth 
from generation to generation, room will be found for error and de- 
parture from the simple truth, on the one hand in the way of an over- 
valuing of authority, on the other, arbitrary freedom (hierarchism and 
rationalism), he proceeds as follows :] 

THE ROMANIZING TENDENCY. 

" I. Alarmed by the abuse of freedom, on the one side, others flee 
from freedom altogether. Lest they should open the door to disorganiz- 
ing arbitrariness, they imprison Christianity itself ; lest they should give 
room to subjectivism, they lead the way to an objectivism which is 
human bondage. Church authority is made the basis of faith; the 
symbols of the Church, and their formula, are placed above the Bible; 
Church tradition is most scrupulously guarded, not because it is the 
truth, but because it is tradition, and thus there is a zeal for evangel- 
ical doctrines which are based merely on tradition. Many, who are 
especially anxious for the credit of orthodoxy, subordinate the study 
of the Scriptures to the symbolical books and the ancient dogmatical 
writers. They are annoyed when the believer in the study of the 
Scripture shows the necessity of harmonizing more completely Church 
doctrine with the Bible. They are sluggish in the fulfillment of the 
duty of the true scribe, in bringing out of the treasure of the heart 
things new and old. (Matthew xiii. 52.) There is a tendency, still 
more extended, to substitute for the ancient, conscious, personal form 
of piety, an impersonal form, which lives in shadowy and aesthetic 
feelings of an indefinite kind. This they accomplish by means of 
gorgeous ceremonial and manifold symbolism ; by subordinating the 
preaching of the word to the liturgy and the sacrament; by the 
propagation of Christianity rather by cramming the mind with Chris- 
tian material than by leading to Christian knowledge and the personal 
appreciation of the truth of salvation ; by sensuous forms and ceremo- 
nials, to which spiritual indolence ascribes the power of pervading the 
entire man, as a fluid with magical influence. And connected with 
this there is likewise an unevangelical emphasis of the power of the 
keys, and a Romanizing distinction between the clergy and laity, 
which is rooted in the unevangelical doctrine of sacramental ordina- 
tion. This method, which is a reaction from evangelical Christianity, 
is unfruitful in religion, is unsuited to the needs of the present age, 



APPENDICES. 



171 



and to the ever-youthful gospel and its regenerative powers. It is 
related to the present as a peevish old man who would carefully guard 
a rich inheritance, yet allows it to rust and spoil, because he does not 
increase it by use and does not continually coin and distribute the 
noble metal of the gospel. The Church will never in this way pre 
vail over the masses of the people who are estranged from it. Rather, 
this leaven of Romanism which has again been brought in leads back 
behind the Reformation, of which it speaks with unhappy retractions 
and regrets, while it takes away or shakes the evangelical assurance 
of faith, destroys the present evangelical unity, misleads, if not to 
apostasy to Rome, yet to weak effort to establish on evangelical soil a 
miniature popedom in every congregation. But we cannot linger 
longer by this foul stream, which now flows through the Evangelical 
Church of more than one land. It has already been condemned by 
what has been said with reference to the modern Romish Church, of 
which it is but a dwarfish, inconsistent copy." 

[At the close of the essay, Dr. Hitchcock, Professor in the Union 
Theological Seminary in New York, who followed in an address on the 
same general subject, rose and said : " We have all listened with 
great satisfaction to the admirable paper which has just been read. I 
have in my mind only one living theologian who might think to bet- 
ter it ; and that is Dr. Dorner himself. The fault must be our own if 
we are not more firmly rooted in the conviction that, in adding to its 
creed this new dogma of Papal Infallibility, the Roman Catholic 
Church has both erred and blundered."] 



HE WAS NOT "PROPERLY" BAPTIZED. 

As an illustration to what lengths men will go who are fanatically 
exercised about the exclusive and " supernatural powers of the priest- 
hood," we give the following from a religious paper in London, of a 
recent date. The clergyman referred to was, of course, one of the ad- 
vanced ritualists, — probably one of the four hundred and eighty-three 
who lately petitioned the archbishop for a regular permit to exercise 
their gifts in the confessional, but against which Lord Shaftesbury, at a 
large public meeting in Exeter Hall, in London, protested, saying, 
among other things, " If bishops yield, and if rubrics are enacted to 
authorize, then let bishops and rubrics all go ! We know the Bible, 
and we will cany it with us ; and we know history, and therefore need 
no experiment to learn what debasement is made on the minds of 
dupes of the confessional, or the power for evil it puts into the hands 
of confessors." 

The article referred to is as follows : 

" The clergy appear determined to precipitate disestablishment. We 
should have thought that now, if ever, especially with the fate of the 



172 



APPENDICES. 



Irish Church before them, they would have at least learned discretion, 
if not justice ; but it seems that even this very modest estimate of their 
capabilities is futile. What might the Shah, for instance, think of the 
following unvarnished statement of how English priestcraft, acting up 
to the strict letter of the prayer-book, outrages our common humanity ? 
A fortnight ago, a little boy, named Arthur Pickford, and aged five 
years, was drowned at Seaton, in the river Axe. He was playing 
by the water, when he was swept off his legs by a tidal wave and 
drowned. The interment was arranged to take place in Seaton church- 
yard, but upon the body reaching the place the clergyman refused to 
allow any service to be performed, as the child had not been properly 
baptized.* Here is the published account of the funeral : 4 The grief 
of the mourners was heart-rending. The poor mother, on looking 
round and seeing the coffin being silently lowered into the little grave, 
exclaimed, in agonizing tones, " Will no one say a single prayer for 
my darling child ?" and, finding no response, she dropped upon her 
knees and uttered a few sentences, which went to the hearts of all 
present, and brought tears into every eye.' We are glad to find that a 
very general feeling of indignation has been aroused, and that even 
the local journals, which are usually inclined to preserve silence in 
such matters, speak out well. How, then, can it be wondered at, it is 
asked, amid the laxity and moral cowardice of late years, that the laity 
should at last wake up to find that the priesthood of this century is 
identical with that of times called something very different, — that the 
spirit is precisely the same as that by which the fires of Smithfield were 
lighted and lively Christians burned each other for the love of God ? 
Human nature is very uniform, and it is natural enough that the love 
of power and the effects of superstition and over-zeal in strong and 
even strictly conscientious natures, when encouraged by the apathy or 
blindness of those most immediately affected, should in time produce 
such fruits as those by which the public feeling is at length aroused." 

FREE PRAYER, OR ONLY PRAYER FROM THE BOOK? 

An eminent and highly successful living Reformed pastor in Switzer- 
land says, in reference to this subject, that, " say what we will, the fact 
is undeniable, that the free spoken prayer is more efficacious and tends 
to greater edification of the people than that which is read from the 
book ; and especially is this the case among people outside the larger 
towns and cities. He does not wish the minister to ascend the pulpit 
without having in his own mind and heart, as it were, prayed and 
thought over the subject-matter of his intended prayer, without which 



* "Properly baptized." Roman Catholics (and High Churchmen elsewhere) lay 
great stress on the " intention." If a minister with law views of baptism, for in- 
stance, baptizes a child, he could not have had the " intention" that that child should, 
through the act, be regenerated ; and so the baptism would be vitiated. Thus, an in- 
telligent woman in the Reformed Church, whose then pastor held very high views, said 
to me, among other strange things, " Since we know what our Church used to teach 
about baptism, we will not allow any minister to baptize our children who has not 
the right intention on the subject." It will, therefore, not surprise anyone to be told 
that, on her pastor removing to another place, she and her family joined another 
church, where, as she supposed, the intention figment was believed in. 



APPENDICES. 



I 73 



he could not feel himself in sympathy with the congregation. But 
having done this, in a devout and prayerful spirit, — with all the needs, 
the trials, the sorrows of his members present to his own soul, — he is 
then best prepared to pray with them and for them most perfectly, far 
better than to go over a form, — may-be a very good one, — according to 
the book, and that, too, the ever-returning self-same one, and nothing 
else." 

" I have," he continues, " already directed attention to the fact how 
many painful experiences we meet with in the religious life of our peo- 
ple, and how often we find such a reliance upon the heartless perform- 
ance of some outward duties ; and in the family, how often great stress 
is laid upon the mere observance of family prayer, with little or no re- 
gard as to how it is done ; and hence many seem to be well satisfied 
with themselves, because they read a prayer from some book, be it 
never so heartlessly, as if that really weie prayer. And now when the 
minister in the church does the same thing, must these people not be 
strengthened in such wrong views ? I cannot withhold in this connec- 
tion a death-bed scene as being in point. The child of a worthy 
family in the village was very ill. The father describes the case him- 
self, thus : « My poor wife was so overcome that she had to sit down 
with the dear child in her arms. " O Lord God, shall it come to this, 
that this my child shall be taken?" she sobbed. " Will God chastise 
us so severely ? Oh, Peter, pray that God would spare it to us-." I took 
our prayer-book and seated myself by the side of the dimly-shining 
lamp, and, half crying, and with earnest devotion, began to read a 
prayer for times of sickness. " Not so, Peter !" she said, " not so ! that 
will be of no use ; there is nothing in that about our sick child. Pray 
that it would please Him to let us keep our child." I then turned over 
the leaves, and began to read another prayer with increased earnest- 
ness. " And that, too, will do no good," she said ; " do pray out of 
yourself just as it comes to you, but about our child, just about it." I 
rose up from the lamp, with a heart full of fear, — fear and anxiety for 
the child, and fear about the prayer to be uttered ; for in that way, by 
myself and out of myself I had never before prayed. And then my 
wife sank down upon her knees, and in the deep agony of her soul 
cried to God.' " 

DIVINE WORSHIP IN TWO CONGREGATIONS. 
[The following is translated from the " Evangelical Reformed Church 
Gazette''' of Germany, in which it appeared as a communication from 
the Rev. Dr. Treviranus, pastor of one of the largest Reformed 
churches in Bremen. Dr. T. was one of the most able, genial, and 
devoted servants of God whom it was our privilege to meet during 
our first visit to Europe in 1843. He now rests with God. The reader 
will doubtless be interested in the description here given, and at 
the same time will also learn how such a sound, learned, and godly 
man looked at things which at present concern the Reformed Church 
in America.] 

" Basle and Hamburg ! Widely apart, both nearly at the extremi- 
ties of the Fatherland, 
15* 



174 



APPENDICES. 



" Where still the German tongue doth ring, 
And German hymns to God in heaven we sing. 

" With many differences, they have still much in common. Both 
cities, though differing in size, are seats of great wealth and trade. 
Both are central points of free States. The one is an old home of the 
Reformed Church; the other, formerly at least, a strong bulwark of 
Lutheranism, from which so many a passage at arms was made against 
the « Calvinists.' Joachim Westphal, Erdmann, Neumeister, Melchior 
Goetze, who thundered against the Reformed from this city, are not 
forgotten. But all this is past now, and a new time has come. In 
Hamburg they have become modernized, whilst what was beautiful 
and good in Basle has been preserved and restored. Clearly to see this, 
we need but refer to the two churches in which the writer was per- 
mitted to be present one Sunday morning, namely, in the large St. 
Michael's in Hamburg, and in the Minster (Cathedral) in Basle. To 
the former we yield the palm in respect to acoustics, whilst its general 
appearance, as well within as without, with its architectural style in 
the time of Louis XIV., impresses one unpleasantly. But the Swiss 
Cathedral has been restored to its old beauty. 

" If the architect could once more return, he would be full of thanks 
to the later generation which has so well understood how to purify the 
thoroughly harmonious edifice from the disfiguring additions, and to 
banish the old red color, so that the stones now look as though they 
had just come from the quarry. 

" Here, in Basle, on a Sunday forenoon, the beautiful chimes called 
the congregation together. The older families of Basle have, for the 
most part, yielded up their property-right to their seats. Nearly all 
the seats are free. In devout silence the mass of the congregation as- 
sembled. When the bells ceased, the organ intoned ; soon it passed 
over into a choral melody, and the whole congregation now sang two 
stanzas out of the excellent Basle hymn-book. It was a devotional 
singing, — praying in singing; and singing prayerfully is, in truth, the 
appropriate aim of congregational singing. Here it was disturbed by 
no noisy coming and going. The soul became silent and collected for 
the prayer which the minister now offered. There was no responding 
congregation, no liturgical succession of formulas, but a hearty con- 
fession of sin, and a believing calling upon that name in whom alone 
there is salvation. It was worship ' in the spirit and in the truth? I 
could not help but think of this saying of our Lord, which the vulgar 
Rationalism in its day despoiled so often, until at last there was neither 
spirit nor truth in its Divine services ; a saying which is in danger of 
being overlooked by laying such stress upon fixed forms and pre- 
scribed prayers, yea, even upon the priestly posture of the liturgist. 
Then followed the announcements. Then first the text, and an ani- 
mated sermon on the word of God. All felt that this was the chief 
thing, — 'building up themselves in their most holy faith.' This was 
followed in the usual way by prayer, singing, and the whole was con- 
cluded with the benediction. 

" In Hamburg the sermon was preceded by lengthy singing. I 
opened the hymn-book at the number indicated by the tablet, but it 



APPENDICES. 



175 



was not the right one. I looked into the book of my neighbor, and 
saw that they were singing, ' Come, Holy Spirit, Son of God.' This 
beautiful hymn by Luther was unchanged ; but the singing was greatly 
disturbed by frequent coming in and rising up. There still exists in 
Hamburg the bad custom, that women (appointed for the purpose) 
point out seats to those who have none of their own ; these go, sing- 
ing out of the open hymn-books, hither and thither, and when they 
catch a glimpse of a stranger they take charge of him and usher him 
into a seat, for which afterward, during the Divine service, the women 
collect from each a shilling, by means of boxes. The three verses 
came to an end, and I again looked for the designated hymn, but it 
was still another hymn, and the whole of ' To God alone on high be 
praise' was sung. When this was concluded, commenced the hymn 
' Heart and heart be knit together.' After a few verses, the minister 
entered the pulpit. At other times I had noticed it as a beneficial 
result of long singing that the people became hungry, as it were, for 
the word, and this, then, would in truth be a compensation for it, 
since it is quite difficult to sing so long with devotion. 

"This hunger was then satisfied, for there followed a decidedly 
biblical, spiritual sermon on the epistle for the day. Rejoiced and 
edified, we left the church. Here also there was no liturgy, but here, 
as in Basle, the chief thing took the most prominent place, namely, 
the preaching of the word of God ; all the rest, whatever weight we 
may attach to it, is and remains subordinate. The word has the 
promise, and in truth, — not the word mediated in manifold ways, 
even although the Lord can give His blessing also to this ; but the 
simple proclamation that there is salvation in no other, and that no 
other name is given unto men whereby we can be saved. The spoken 
word, with demonstration of the Spirit and of power ! Therefore 
the member of the Reformed Church could be edified as well in 
Hamburg as in Basle. When on a former occasion I heard Claus 
Harms preach, and took sincere delight in his sermon, I was still com- 
pelled to leave the church with the silent thanksgiving in my heart 
that I was Reformed. For, after the sermon, the minister pronounced 
the benediction from the pulpit, and then went down to the so-called 
altar (it was in the afternoon, and there was no communion), and 
sang the same over again before the same assemblage. I was not able 
to realize the adage, Stiperflua non nocent (i.e., 'superfluous things 
do no harm')." 

LITURGICAL SERVICE, ETC. 

Luther went to Rome with the expectation of finding there the 
nearest approach to God and a foretaste of heavenly peace and comfort, 
for which his soul ardently longed. " There," he thought, " dwells the 
Holy Father, and there I shall find so many of the holy servants of 
Christ, that it must needs be the nearest approach to heaven to be in 
such company and to worship in those holy places." But just the very 
opposite effect was produced upon him. Never had he met with greater 
irreverence in priests, never with greater ungodliness and worldli- 
ness among the people. He came home with the conviction that it 
was rather the synagogue of Satan than the city of God, and that 



ij6 



APPENDICES. 



corruption and debauchery dwelt nowhere else so fearfully under the 
cloak of religion, as in Rome, with all its gorgeous ritual. 

The writer has frequently expressed the wish to some who are so 
loud in their denunciations of the " baldness of our Protestant Church 
service," that they might have the ocular demonstration of what is to 
be seen in Roman Catholic churches during their services in the 
classic home of this Church, — in France, in Italy, in Spain, everywhere, 
except in countries where Protestantism has exerted a reformatory 
effect upon priest and people. They would, like Luther, come home 
with quite different views and feelings, unless they had beforehand fully 
made up their minds to become submissive to all and singular the 
shams, the trickeries, the mountebankism of innumerable priests, and 
the mechanical, often most ludicrous, often blasphemous, irreverence 
and superstitious rehearsals of Ave Marias and Paternosters. That 
there are notable exceptions even there is fully admitted, but that they 
are only exceptions is equally true. On this point let us hear what the 
cool-headed, learned Gennan theologian Dr. Richard Rothe says. Pie 
is writing to a friend from Rome, where he had spent some time. " I 
cannot tell you," he says, "how disgusted I am with what I have 
seen of the worship in the (Romish) churches here. How any Prot- 
estant can here have any desire to pass over to the Catholic Church 
is inexplicable to me. It is here (in Rome) that one only comes to the 
full measure of the conviction how much reason one has to be thankful 
to God for being a Protestant Christian." 

A writer in the (Episcopal) Church Journal of New York City says : ■ 

" I desire to call to your notice the fact that we have within the pale 
of our Church some Roman Catholics in disguise! Last Sunday 
morning (September 21st) I attended the seven-o'clock communion at 
Trinity chapel, and noticed the following singular performances. When 
the Creed was said, the congregation bowed the Tiead reverently (as 
was proper) at the name of Jesus; but what was my surprise to see 
several worshipers kneel at the sentence, ' born of the Virgin Mary,' 
and at its conclusion rise again ; and others bowed more devoutly at 
the Virgin's name than at the name of their Saviour ! When the 
communion had been received, and we were leaving the chancel-rail, 
I noticed one man in particular leave the chancel-rail, step back a few 
paces, and kneel with clasped hands, gazing at something on the 
ceiling of the chancel." 

The liturgical service of the Episcopal Church, in the sense of 
the oldest and best of its writers, is deeply spiritual and evangelical. 
But for its frequent repetitions of the same forms in the same service, 
no serious objection could be made to it. And yet let any one go to 
most of the churches in London and elsewhere, and all the boasted devo- 
tion of a "rich churchly service in which the people join" vanishes 
like the morning cloud. Instead of "all the people praising God," it 
is a parcel of boys in white frocks, not unlike a certain private garment, 
rising and bowing, and, with the choir "up yonder," doing all, or 
nearly all, the responding, singing, and praying. So in West- 
minster Abbey, and so in most of the churches in which I attended in 
Europe. The exception to this I found — more than anywhere in any 
country — in Surrey Chapel, Dr. Newman Hall's Independent (" Puri- 



APPENDICES. 



177 



tan") congregation of four thousand people, where a somewhat abbre- 
viated form of the Episcopal Liturgy is used. There all the people sang, 
all the people joined in the service with life and spirit, and we felt like 
being in an evangelical congregation in Germany, where the singing 
of the majestic chorals was a liturgical service that lifted the heart up 
to God, and made you forget all the artistic flummery of " book, bell, and 
candle," or of " churchly vestments with gold trappings, and bowing 
and scraping boys," which so interests some minds in ritualistic places 
of worship. And that church in Surrey Chapel in London, with its 
liturgical worship, is composed of living Christians, made such by what 
is sneeringly decried as " Puritanism" or " Methodism." Just because 
the life of religion was in the people, did life flow forth through them 
from the Liturgy. The Liturgy did not create that life, but the life 
created the Liturgy. Let us first, then, be careful to have living, 
devoted congregations, and if then there is a want felt by the people 
for proper forms, they will come to hand in a natural way. But let us 
beware of thrusting upon the churches a ritualism, even if not objec- 
tionable in a doctrinal way, for which they have no heart, as if this 
would make them a whit better. There is a formalism with no forms, 
which is lamentable enough, but in multiplying forms you set about it 
systematically to produce and perpetuate formalism. Let us avoid all 
forced work, especially in public worship. 

HOW RITUALISM PROGRESSES. 

A Religiotis Order in the Episcopal Church. 

It appears by some late publications that there exists in the Episco- 
pal churches in England and America a religious order called " The 
Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament." The associates of the 
"American Branch" of this confraternity held their Annual Confer- 
ence during the latter part of the month of June. There was much 
posturing and many processionals, and the conference was opened by 
" vespers," sung in St. Ignatius' Church, New York City, where Dr. 
Ewer* is celebrant, and who, it seems, is Superior-General of the 
American Branch of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, The 
next morning there were " low masses" every hour at several of the 
advanced ritualistic churches in New York City. At the " seven- 
o'clock mass" at St. Ignatius' Church the celebrant was Dr. Quintard, 
Bishop of Tennessee, who was also figuring at Cape May about that 



* This Dr. Ewer is the person who, two years ago, preached some sermons in 
which he tried to show that " Protestantism was a failure." We have not yet seen 
anything like a failure of Protestantism, but the papers have lately informed the 
public that he was lecturing in favor of Darwinism (that men are descended from 
monkeys). So, then, if this be true, Ewer himself has proved a failure, and a very 
considerable failure. Another person of the same order, a few months ago, preached 
a whining discourse in the West, about the "failure of the Protestant Church to 
draw the masses," and in two months after he was drawn into Holy Mother 
Church. Thus it proves the old saying to be true, that when men see all things 
wrong around them, there is generally something wrong in themselves. It is the 
easiest (and poorest) thing in the world to be forever finding fault with everything 
and everybody, but not so easy (nor so noble) a thing to render things better. The 
former class may be said to be moral dyspeptics, who deserve our pity more than out 
blame. 

M 



1 78 



APPENDICES. 



time. He seems to have been the only bishop mixed up in this mass- 
saying, and we hope that some of the evangelical people of his diocese 
will endeavor to find out from him what " low mass" means as 
administered by an Episcopal dignitary. 

" High mass" also was celebrated at the Church of St. Mary the 
Virgin, and the preacher was Rev. Father Grafton, S.S., J.E., cabalistic 
initials which we cannot interpret. Dr. Ewer, Superior-General of 
the order, was re-elected, and gave an annual address, in which he 
congratulated his brothers that the principle of non-communicating 
attendance and the vital truth involved therein, viz., that the Blessed 
Eucharist is a holy sacrifice as well as a sacrament, had been success- 
fully asserted in the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church ; that there, were now sixty-five priests-associate, as 
against twenty-one in 1869; that eucharistic vestments are worn in six- 
teen out of forty-one dioceses ; and that eucharistic lights have recently, 
and without objection, been introduced in Trinity Church, New York. 

Dr. Batterson, formerly of St. Clement's, Philadelphia, offered a 
resolution to the effect " That the secretary be directed to forward semi- 
annually to all priests-associate a printed list of all priests-associate, 
which list is to be considered confidential." 

At the close of this business-meeting the Anima Christi was said, 
the prayers for the Confraternity and the repose of the souls of the 
dead were offered, and the conference was brought to a close. 

Nothing has been said of all this in the American Episcopal papers ; 
but the New York Independent " smoked it out" of a corner of an 
English High-Church journal. 

HOW THE LEAVEN WORKS. 

A Lutheran clergyman writes to the Observer as follows : 
" Should any of our readers be privileged to spend a few Sabbaths 
in Baltimore, we would advise them to give two separate afternoons to 
Ritualism, one to St. Luke's, the other to Mount Calvary : either will 
do ; both will satisfy you as to how far men and women can be Protest- 
ants in name and Romanists in heart. Enter Mount Calvary, as an illus- 
tration. The head does not call himself rector, but priest. Sisters are 
there in black garments and hoods, with white faces, gloomy and 
ghastly. A font of holy water stands at the door on entering; banners 
decorate the high altar, and candles blaze on every side. Here mass 
is said, or its full equivalent. Mary is recognized, and prayers to the 
Virgin, by her full title of Mother of God. Then begins the show, and 
the low chanting is heard afar off, very solemn, sepulchral, and theat- 
rical. Then enters the procession, the audience bowing and crossing 
themselves ; resplendent banners, boys gay in white somethings, very 
good imitations of genteel night-gowns, or some other under-garment. 
The priests tread majestically forward, like theatrical kings, mixed 
with the boys, who seem rather to enjoy the fun. Then enters the 
principal actor, the high-priest, with sad face and studied gait, moving 
to the altar, where he kneels, and behind him the assistant priest pros- 
trates himself. Then — well, enough of this mockery — this stuff is 
called religion. We go away, partly in disgust, partly in sadness, and 



APPENDICES. 



179 



we ask ourselves, Is this aping of Rome to reform the. world? Is this 
the simple gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ ? Why, reader, it would 
puzzle you even to give a list of the names of the parts of this show, 
the various garments, etc. ; and yet we wonder that these people go 
over to Rome. We herald it through the press. We regard it as a 
strange thing. The only wonder ought to be, not that some go, but 
that any remain ; for in Protestantism they know it is mockery, and in 
Rome it is consistent. It is sometimes asked by people who are in the 
habit of attending their own churches, and have no inclination to run 
about, whether these ritualistic churches are well attended. We 
answer, Yes — crowded. ' Sunday theatricals' it is called by many. 
People will have amusement, and Sunday is well observed in Baltimore. 
Theatres, etc., are closed, and hence you see the young folks moving 
up-town to witness the performance at St. Luke's or Mount Calvary. 
Very recently an old canon, peculiar to the Episcopal Church of Mary- 
land, was abolished at the convention held in Baltimore, It referred 
to theatricals and other vain amusements. The Episcopalians of 
Maryland can now indulge with the brethren of other States and 
Churches ; and, there being now no canon to reach theatricals and 
other vain amusements, we suppose St. Luke's and Mount Calvary, and 
others of that class, can flourish without protest. Bishop Whittingham 
suppressed Mount Calvary Church, on one occasion, for its mummeries, 
and since then its priest went over to Rome, and Bishop Whittingham 
now protests very justly against the abolition of the old canon. There 
may be some connection between them." 

THE USE OF THE LITURGY IN CONGREGATIONS. 

After the greater portion of this work had already been in type, it 
occurred to the author that an incidental allusion in regard to the use 
of the Liturgy might be misconstrued, and hence he allows himself to 
add the following in this place. 

He would say, then, that as matters stand now, each congregation 
has the right to have the Liturgy introduced in public worship or not, as 
seems best to it. We deem this a most undesirable state of things, as 
tending to great diversity instead of uniformity in the public worship 
of the sanctuary. But the Synod has so ordered it, and the General 
Synod in Dayton has settled the matter. No minister, however, and 
no Consistory even, has the right to introduce that form of worship 
without the consent of the people. The book has not been adopted by 
the Synod. It simply allowed its use. The 44th Article of the Con- 
stitution says that in the spiritual concerns of a congregation none but 
communicants are entitled to vote, and it implies, of course, that a 
change in the form of woi-ship, which is a spiritual concern, is to be 
decided by them. So it was explained at Dayton by all who spoke on 
the side of the Liturgy, according to the reports published in the 
Messenger. 

Dr. Nevin says in his pamphlet, The Liturgical Question, " It must 
ever be worse than folly to think of carrying any measure of this sort, 
with a religious denomination like ours, without its own most general 
if not entirely universal consent.'''' 



i8o 



APPENDICES. 



At the General Synod in Dayton Dr. Apple said : 
" It is for them [the churches] to determine whether they will accept 
and use it.'' 

Dr. Gans said : " We owe it to the people to say what they want in 
an order of worship." 

Dr. Nevin : " Are you not willing to trust the people ? Do you 
know better than they what they want ?" 

Dr. Gerhart : " It must be submitted to the people. I am not afraid 
of its going down to the people" [not the minister merely, nor the 
Consistory merely]. 

Dr. Russell : " Let the Liturgy therefore go to the churches for 
optional use and trial." And similarly they all spoke. 

It is plain, therefore, that the churches, as such, are to decide for 
themselves in this matter. This is in accordance with the Constitution, 
and also, as we have just seen, with the fully-expressed sentiments of 
the representatives of the General Synod, which allowed the use of the 
Liturgy. Christian prudence, however, would dictate to a minister that 
he ought not to introduce it, unless it can be done without offense to 
any, or at least any considerable number, of his members ; because its 
use is, in any view, not essential, and, as Dr. Nevin has said, the Re- 
formed Church got along without a Liturgy before, and it can do so 
still. 

"INFANT BAPTISM." 

Professor Doctor Luthardt (Lutheran) says : " Once when Jewish 
mothers brought their children to Jesus to bless them, and the disci- 
ples would have repelled them because these little children understood 
as yet nothing of the matter, Jesus expressly reproved them, and took 
the children in His arms, laid His hands upon them, and blessed them. 
[He did not say that they were " under the power of the devil."] 
And why should not we, too, bring our children to Him, and feel cer- 
tain that He receives them and gives them His blessing ? It is of 
this that baptism is the expression." And in a note it is added : 

" Matt. xix. 13, seq. ; Mark x. 13, seq. ; Luke xviii. 15, seq. Thus 
were the disciples taught the position occupied by children with respect 
to the kingdom of heaven. Baptism in Church times corresponds with 
the blessing then bestowed on children by the Lord Jesus." — Saving 
7 ruths, p. 240. 

"SACERDOTAL ABSOLUTION." 

The following are the concluding objections against a published 
sermon on the above theme, by the Rev. M. A. Curtis, of the Episcopal 
Church in North Carolina. The review is from the pen of the late 
Dr. J. Addison Alexander, and is found in the Princeton Review, vol. 
- xvii. The whole article is able and thorough, like everything from 
that remarkable man. 

" Our fifth objection to the doctrine [of sacerdotal absolution] is that, 
as a theory, it is part and parcel of a system of falsehood, from which 
it cannot be detached without gross inconsistency and arbitrary violence. 
Among the unscriptural and dangerous doctrines which it presupposes, 



APPENDICES. 



181 



or to which it leads, is the doctrine that the Apostles were the original 
recipients of the Holy Ghost, whom they alone had the power to com- 
municate by the imposition of hands; that they transmitted this power 
to their episcopal successors; that in every ordination by a bishop, 
sanctifying grace and supernatural power are imparted; that all who 
are thus ordained priests have power to make the sacraments effectual 
means of communicating the benefits of redemption, the power, as even 
Protestants express it, of making the body and blood of Christ ; that in 
the Eucharist the sacrifice of Christ is really repeated, or at least so 
commemorated as to secure the pardon of sin ; that it is only by par- 
ticipation in the sacraments, thus administered, that men can be 
sanctified and saved. With the priestly power to forgive sins is 
connected, on the one hand, the necessity of specific confession, and, 
on the other, the infallibility of the Church; with that, the denial of 
the right of private judgment; and with that, the necessity of persecu- 
tion. To one who goes the whole length of these errors, their connec- 
tion and agreement can but serve to strengthen his convictions ; but to 
those who shrink from any of them, it ought to be a serious considera- 
tion that they stand in the closest logical relation to the plausible and 
cherished dogma of sacerdotal absolution. 

" Our sixth objection to the doctrine is that it is practically a sub- 
version of the gospel, a substitution of human mediation for the 
mediation of Christ, and an exaltation of the priest into the place of 
God. It is easily said that the power arrogated by the clergy is deriva- 
tive and delegated ; that it is God who pardons and Christ who makes 
the throne of grace accessible, just as it may be said and is said that 
the papist who adores an image uses it only as a help to his devotion 
while he worships God. The profession may in either case be honest, 
but in neither case can it avail to change the practical result, to wit, 
that God is neglected or forgotten in the idol of the priest. Instead of 
that dependence on the Spirit and the word, which form an indispensa- 
ble condition of Christ's promise to His people, the clergy are invested 
with authority, first, to decide what is Scripture ; then to determine 
what the Scripture means ; and then what is to be believed as matter 
of faith, though not contained in Scripture ; while at the same time 
they alone have power to forgive the sins of men. This practical 
restriction of the power to determine what is sin and to forgive sin, in 
the hands of a certain class of ministers, as such, without regard to 
their character and standing before God, is the sum, essence, and soul 
of Antichrist; the constituent principle of that very power which has 
debauched and enslaved the world; of the power which sits in the 
temple of God ; the mystery of iniquity, sustained by the working of 
Satan with all power, the power of the sword, the power of learning, 
the power of superstition, the power of an evil conscience, the power 
of lying wonders, a power which has held and will hold the world in 
subjection till the Lord shall consume it with the Spirit of His mouth 
and destroy it by the brightness of His coming. The gospel thus 
preached is ' another gospel,' and the doctrine which tends to such a 
practical result is and must be false. 

" To such of our readers as are satisfied, by these or any other argu- 
ments, that forgiveness of sins is not a sacerdotal function, that the 
16 



182 



APPENDICES, 



Christian ministry is not a priesthood, that the power of remission was 
not given to the ministry, that the power of absolute effectual remis- 
sion was not given at all, that the contrary hypothesis is one link in a 
chain of fearful errors, and practically tends to the subversion of the 
gospel, we may now say what we waived our right to say before, to 
wit, that the doctrine of sacerdotal absolution is unscriptural, dishonor- 
ing to God, and incompatible with human fallibility and weakness. 

" In the course of our argument, and at its close, the question natu- 
rally presents itself, What is the Church to which the power of remis- 
sion has been granted ? how does it act, how can it be consulted, what 
relation has it to the Christian ministry? These are inquiries of the 
highest moment, and the answer to them is really involved in the pre- 
ceding argument. But a direct and full solution is not necessary to 
the negative conclusions which we have endeavored to establish, and 
may be better given in another place." 

"GOING BACKWARD." 

This has been a favorite expression with some of our brethren who 
have gone forward pretty far on the "inclined plane," as Dr. Dorner 
calls it. They justify this by saying that the Reformed Church had 
done so in some other things, — with the Creed, for instance, which had 
been greatly undervalued, but was now restored in these latter days as 
an authoritative symbol ; and so also in regard to " educational reli- 
gion," which had pushed aside " wild-fire fanaticism," so threateningly 
dangerous in the Church at one time. Now, on these two little illus- 
trative references I wish to say a few words. 

And first, When was the Creed undervalued in the Reformed Church 
any more than it is now ? Was it not always taught in the instruction 
of our youth ? Can a dozen ministers be named in the whole East- 
ern Synod who neglected it in this way ? There were some— foreign- 
ers, perhaps — who did so ; I mean those who came from other de- 
nominations. The great, the overwhelming majority of our ministers 
instructed their young people in the Catechism, in which the Creed is 
explained with great simplicity and beauty; not indeed in the new, 
forced, and unnatural sense which is now attempted to be given to it, 
and which was never — I say never — before given to it, nay, not even 
in the fourth nor in the fourteenth century. And so also in reference 
to "wild-fire fanaticism." The Church — I speak of the Eastern por- 
tion particularly — was but very partially affected (or afflicted) by ex- 
treme measures in and through our own ministry. Those portions of 
it where the evil was most felt were acted upon from outside of the 
Reformed Church, especially by one denomination with which our 
own is so closely connected. It is true that some of our ministers, 
under the pressure and force of outward circumstances, were in some 
instances led to adopt measures that were of doubtful expediency. 
But these were rare ; they were exceptional cases. So that this hue' 
and cry, started by one or two men and now taken up at second and 
third hand by younger brethren, is really an affair of moonshine, or at 
least dealing in stilted exaggerations. I speak that which I know. 
I had as good an opportunity of knowing the status of the Church 



APPENDICES. 



I8 3 



at the period referred to as any one else, because of the position in 
which I was then placed and my frequent mingling with pastors 
and people in almost every part of the Church. And I remember 
well that a few of the brethren who were then sympathizing with the 
" new measures" to some extent, thought that / was too " old- 
fogyish" for them (that was the word) to be invited to preach at their 
religious meetings, as once, but who have since gone " up" and " for- 
ward" so high and so far that we cannot again touch hands. 

No: our Church, as a whole, did not greatly suffer in that direction 
from within our own bosom, but from without. She suffered much more, 
I think, from too much cold than too much heat, and I greatly fear 
such is the case in a degree to this day. This was the judgment of 
one of our professors twenty years ago, when traveling over Eastern 
Pennsylvania. When one of the worthy but very easy ministers told 
him that the " Albrights" were creating some trouble in his country 
charge, the professor replied, " A little stirring of the stagnant waters 
here, I should judge, would do you good; for you need it." Hence 
the illustrations which some of the younger brethren are so fond of 
bringing forward to show that, as in these things the new-theory move- 
ment was for good, therefore it must be good to go back still farther, 
is a non- sequitur : in other words, it will not hold. The premises are 
not true. It is far from being true that the Church then (thirty years 
ago) "was ready to fall over into wild-fireism." It is an effort to 
"raise funds on a fictitious capital." "When Dr. Nevin's tract on the 
Anxious Bench appeared, the feverish excitement which had pre- 
vailed was nearly at its end. That tract came in good time, and 
strengthened the sober and sobering second thought of many in the 
Lutheran Church and also in our own. It did good, unquestionably ; 
but it is too much to say that the tract put a stop to the epidemic. It 
had in great measure run its course. Nor was it all unmixed evil. 
Many who were then brought into the Church under the " high-press- 
ure system," as it is called, are among the stable, bright members 
and ministers of the Church now, some of these in our own Church, 
and several even among the advanced side of it ! 

This "going back" is well enough within proper limits. But we 
have, alas ! already seen that there is a going back that tendeth toward 
and into Rome. And yet, with all the heedlessness of ardent youth, 
sober-minded men will write and preach up to us this " going back," 
in order to go gloriously forward according to the " law of develop- 
ment" — a word of such charming sound — and the "law of progress." 
Thus discourseth a writer in the Messenger of September 17, 1 873 : 

" Will not Protestantism be forced, by the law of progress itself, to 
approach the Church of Rome both theologically and practically; not 
to fall over helplessly and blindly into her arms [of course not blindly, 
but with eyes wide open], but to cope with her in the theoretical and 
practical issues of our common Christian faith ? [But, my dear child, 
old mother is too old to learn from you, and you are very green to ex- 
pect to gain her over to you.] Is not this the only way in which she can 
be brought to abandon her errors and to yield to the just and sacred 
demands of personal freedom ? There seems to be clearly a fixed and 
absolute necessity of going backward in this case also, that a triumph- 



1 84 



APPENDICES. 



ant going forward in the grand solution of the gigantic problems of 
the last times may follow as a result. We settle no dogmas now ; we 
mean only to suggest ideas : let time show whether these ideas are in 
accord with the law of historical development, the law of life and sal- 
vation to the world." [The " dogmas" are all fixed, like the laws of the 
Medes and Persians, in the Roman Church. Time will show that 
your laws are no laws at all, but a mere ignis fatuus.~\ 

THE " DEFECTS" OF THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. 

Whilst the last pages of this work are passing through the press, the 
Reformed Church Messenger of December io contains an article from 
one of the professors at Lancaster on the late meeting of the Evan- 
gelical Alliance in New York, which claims some notice. 

The criticism is presented, we are told in the intioduction, "not 
in an unfriendly spirit," for it is rather "an act of friendship to look 
at the defects as well as the merits of that assemblage." 

1. The first defect which he notices is, that "it failed to represent 
all sections of Protestantism. It was predominantly l^resbyterianis?n. 
Germany was but 'partially represented.' But few delegates, com- 
paratively, from that country were present." 

2. But the greatest defect, he thinks, " was the absence of a Lu- 
theran representation.'''' There was one there, it is true, besides Dr. 
Conrad, but he " felt that the Alliance was entirely one-sided, and 
could not properly represent Protestantism; and so he read his essay, 
a philosophical one, and merely looked on." . . . " Lutheranism was 
there only through politeness, not to speak a great Lutheran word. 
Dr. Krauth could have done that; he has already uttered it in his 
able work on the Conservative Theology." 

3. "Then the Alliance failed in representing what may be called the 
churchly side of Protestantism." The professor adds that he would 
like to see even a broader discussion than this to be had, and if the 
Roman [Catholic] Church would consent, he would like to see " Ro- 
man and Protestant issues discussed." 

Now, as to the first defect adverted to, we have only to say that if 
" Presbyterianism" was more largely represented than others in the Alli- 
ance, it would seem to show clearly that Presbyterians took a more heart- 
felt interest in that meeting. Why were some other Churches not more 
fully represented (the Reformed from this country, for instance) ? Just 
because they preferred to " look on" merely, or even preferred to pre- 
judice ministers and people against the Alliance. Should they now 
complain against "one-sided" representation in that body, when they 
themselves, perhaps, were the very persons who prevented a larger 
representation ? — As for Germany being but " partially represented," 
we wish to say that it is to be regretted that providential circum- 
stances prevented some of the most sincere friends of the cause and 
some of the brightest lights of that country from being present on the 
occasion. Tholuck, unable from bodily infirmity to be present, was 
there, however, by a written paper; Dr. von Hoffmann, the eminent 
Prussian court-preacher, died just prior to the time of the meeting; 
Tischendorff, the renowned Oriental Christian scholar, became par- 



APPENDICES. 



I8 5 



alyzed; and some others were prevented by similar causes from being 
present. And yet Germany was not feebly nor "partially" repre- 
sented, taking all things into account. Dorner, Christlieb, Fliedner, 
Krummacher, Noel (of Berlin), Boegner, Prof. Witte, Prof. Dr. 
Kraft, Count Bernstorff, Dr. Zimmermann, and perhaps others, were 
there. Surely this was no mean delegation, even as to numbers ; and 
as to intellectual and moral force they were a mighty host, and their 
presence was highly appreciated by thousands. As for the Reformed 
Church from abroad, it was numerous and highly respectable. From 
France, from Switzerland, from Germany, and from Holland, more 
than a score were present. Only from the Reformed Church of our 
own country (our own branch of it, we mean) we had no correspond- 
ing representation. We feel humiliated at the thought, but especially 
when we think of the reason why it was not otherwise. 

As regards the second defect referred to by the professor, it is some- 
what singular that he' should take it so much to heart that that side 
of Lutheranism should not be fully represented which unchurches the 
Reformed, and, indeed, all other Protestant denominations. In "that 
great word" spoken by Dr. Krauth in his book, he coolly hands the 
Reformed professor ar\d his Church over to unchurchly sectarists. 
And is it for this that the professor feels bound to praise him ? One 
cannot help being reminded of the keen irony of the Apostle in 2 Cor. 
xi. 20. — But the professor commits an egregious mistake when he 
makes Lutheranism responsible for such ultra High Church views. Dr. 
Krauth would represent a small fraction only of the Lutheran Church in 
Germany and America when combined. The separated Lutherans in 
Germany — the High Church — are a veiy small body, taking even the 
five or six different fractions existing there all together. The same is 
substantially true of this country, although we do not know how the 
case may stand relatively. But we doubt if, in the separated body to 
which Dr. K. belongs (" The Council"), a majority can be found to 
stand by his exclusive views. This, of course, does not concern us ; 
but it concerns the criticism of our Reformed professor. 

4. And when, finally, the professor regards it as a defect that the 
" churchly side" in Protestantism was not duly represented in the Al- 
liance, and a wish is expressed that the Roman Church, even, might 
also be represented, in order to have " Roman and Protestant issues 
discussed," we cannot but marvel at his taste, as well as at the total 
misapprehension of the nature and object of the Alliance. Contro- 
versial discussion, — discussing prelacy and priesthood, the Papal In- 
fallibility question, et cetera ! Surely the professor has mistaken the 
foundation-principle of the Evangelical Alliance altogether. He 
seems to have in his mind a theological debating-society, in which all 
the discordant elements are to engage in a gladiatorial encounter. 
And then, when the fight is over, who is to act as umpire in behalf of 
the multitudinous combatants? Most devoutly would we say, From 
such an Assembly deliver us ! and we cannot but believe our friend in 
Lancaster, with all his seeming calmness and gentleness, even towards 
his opponents, would be tempted to say, Procul, O procul este, pro 
fani ! 

16* 



i86 



APPENDICES. 



THE BEST MODE OF COUNTERACTING MODERN 
INFIDELITY. 

Professor Christlieb, of the University of Bonn, in Prussia, read a 
part only of a paper he had prepared on the above subject. But its 
effect upon the thousands who heard it was such that other thousands 
who heard of it requested that the lecture might be repeated, which 
was afterwards done, to the delight of all, notwithstanding it occupied 
two hours and forty-five minutes in its delivery. The effect is said to 
have been overpowering, and its publication in book-form has been 
requested, and it has already been printed. We give the following 
brief sketch of its leading points, as prepared by the editor of the New 
York Observer, who was the General Secretary of the Alliance. Prof. 
Christlieb said : The Church should eschew all methods of defending 
her faith which did not rest upon a spiritual and moral basis and look 
to the conversion of the objector. The subject was divided naturally 
under three heads. The first part was as to the encountering of un- 
belief in individuals. The best method was that by which the con- 
science and the heart could be reached. The inward causes and 
effects of unbelief upon the moral character were to be enlarged upon, 
not in an inquisitorial spirit, but in a sympathetic way. It should be 
shown that faith and knowledge were not antagonistic. Conite once 
thoughtfully paused before what he called the radical evil within us. 
The morality of men was defective. In Christ there was moral per- 
fection, confessed even by Rationalistic critics. With regard to the 
best scientific method of defense, the positions were the clear defini- 
tion of the fundamental articles of our faith as distinguished from the 
less important ones. In every fortress there was a central stronghold, 
then there was the enceinte* and then the outside fortifications. The 
central position of Christianity was the essential doctrine of the atone- 
ment of Christ, reconciling men to God. Certain positions were in- 
dispensable to this, — our original need, and the love of God which 
carried out the atonement ; the reception of the word into the heart, 
and the regeneration of the believer. The enceinte was the doctrine of 
Holy Scripture as the record of Divine revelation. The outer circle 
comprised such matters as historical investigation and philosophical 
speculation. The outer circle should not be given up prematurely; 
but a wise defender would withdraw from it sooner than risk the inner 
fort. With regard to philosophy, the harmony and symmetry of the 
Christian system had to be demonstrated, and it could be shown how 
the isolated conceptions of truth outside of revelation converged to- 
wards a focus in the Biblical system. Without embarrassing oppo- 
nents with such questions as the positive and substantial results of 
these speculations, what were their main positions ? (The professor 
rapidly sketched some of the main philosophical theories prevalent in 
Germany.) Such views, if impartially examined, led to the conclusion 
that the faith of the Christian was the only star of hope for humanity. 
Let us boldly attack unbelievers on this their weak point. In all 
natural and pantheistic systems the spiritual capacities of man were 



* Enceinte — a French military term, which means the wall or inclosure of a place, 
citadel, etc., — the outer defense. 



APPENDICES. 



I8 7 



sacrificed. With reference to the German general notion of inspira- 
tion, he would guard against any exaggerated theory of inspiration, as 
placing undue advantage in the hands of opponents. The canon of 
Scripture was not apostolically announced ; but was it not probable that 
the Spirit guided the Church in the adoption of the canon ? From the 
inner spirit of the canonical Scriptures the strongest proof of their 
authority should be drawn. If chronological and other disputes arose, 
it was wise to say, in the spirit of Luther, "What matter, if it does 
not invalidate our central truths?" He would say, " What cannot be 
denied need not be feared." But if criticism sought to invalidate 
revelation, it should be boldly met. The objection to the resurrection, 
for instance, should be met with the rejoinder that primitive Christian- 
ity cannot be explained if Christ did not do what the Gospels alleged. 
He would also advise stripping modern skepticism of the claim 
of novelty. With regard to the attacks of anti-miraculous, natural 
science, a sharp line must be drawn between the end and object 
of Scripture and of natural science. The latter dealt with things as 
they are, and could not penetrate into the spiritual and invisible world. 
A stand should then be taken on the general harmony already estab- 
lished between Biblical cosmogony and science. As to the generation 
of man from mere natural forces, the argument should be drawn from 
man's moral self- consciousness pointing to a Divine origin and the 
unity of the race. With reference to the attacks on Christianity as a 
social power, there were two lines of defense : — first, the historic 
method, as to the effects and spirit of infidelity. " By their fruits ye 
shall know them." The proof that the fruit of infidelity was cor- 
rupt and corrupting was very convincing. The professor scathingly 
exposed the spirit of modern infidelity, its shallow learning, the poor 
substitutes it afforded to humanity for the ennobling and sublime doc- 
trines of revealed religion, and its want of practical results tending to 
the welfare of man. In the last continental war the great task of 
succoring the wounded and needy fell upon the Church. Christianity 
was the bond that held humanity together, — the true conservative in- 
fluence of society. In fact, not only as Christians, but as citizens and 
patriots, they must protest against infidelity. The second line of de- 
fense was the practical religious method, — the actual proof of Christian 
truth by the actual fruits of a Christian life. Narrow-minded preju- 
dices must be laid aside. This conference was a practical proof of 
Christian life. The Christian was the world's Bible. The strongest 
argument for the truth of Christianity was the true Christian. The 
best proof of Christ's resurrection was a living Church. Meanwhile, 
the world was fast becoming divided into two hostile camps, — the 
unbelievers and the faithful. Every church and eveiy nation should 
contribute its peculiar talent for the defense and honor of the truth, in 
intellectual argument, in courageous living, in benevolence, in love. 

" It is impossible," says Dr. Prime, " to convey in writing any idea 
of the effect produced by the paper of Professor Christlieb of which 
the above is a meagre outline. The audience listened with rapt 
attention, and at the close broke forth into shouts of approval ; great 
relief was produced by the singing of the verses, 

" ' Dear dying Lamb, thy precious blood 
Shall never lose its power.' " 



i88 



APPENDICES. 



WHAT IS TO BE THE EFFECT? 

This question is on the lips of all who have enjoyed the wonderful 
meeting of the Evangelical Alliance, It is confessed on all hands that 
the Conference was attended with signal evidence of Divine power, 
and that those who were present enjoyed a revival of religion extraor- 
dinary in its character and unprecedented in its immediate usefulness. 
So far as we have knowledge from tradition and history, no religious 
convention in any period of time, in any country, ever commanded 
such attention, or so powerfully and instantaneously affected the public 
mind. It was manifested in the Conference, in all its sections and 
popular meetings, that the people were not running after novelties or 
seeking sensations. They desired religious instruction. The ablest essays 
developing strong religious sentiment and feeding the. soul with the 
profoundest religious truth were heard with the highest satisfaction ; 
while the unpremeditated exhortation, however warm and brilliant, was 
regarded as a waste of precious time. The people came to learn the 
way of God more perfectly, and in hearing they found great reward. 

On those who enjoyed the rare privilege of attending the meetings the 
effect was mighty for good. And the effect, also, on the interests 
of evangelical religion in the city and in the whole country has been 
powerful and happy. It has exhibited an intellectual strength and an 
amount of learning and zeal on that side, which the free religionists and 
other enemies of the gospel had not imagined that truth could command. 

And what is to be done about it now ? It should be followed by 
such results as will make it felt in all the cities and villages and rural 
districts of this whole country. It should mark an era in the history 
of Christian union, united religious effort, closer relationship and more 
ardent love among all the followers of Christ, of whatever name. All 
over She land Christians ought to associate themselves into Alliances, 
irrespective of denominations, and auxiliary to the great Alliance of 
the United States, thus constituting themselves members of it, and 
increasing its power. In all these places such Unions will bring Chris- 
tians of many religious names into harmonious action for the pro- 
motion of good works, while by the principles of the Alliance the 
denominational peculiarities and relations of all are left undisturbed. 
Such unity of effort and prayer, in all places, will not fail to give fresh 
impulse to evangelical religion. It would be in the best sense of the 
word a revival. That God would take pleasure in such a result 
there can be no doubt; and it is equally certain that the best spiritual 
interests of the people would be promoted. 

CHRIST INCARNATE IF MAN HAD NOT SINNED. 

[To corroborate what is said on p. 19, the following extract is given:] 
" It is quite evident that even had the angels in heaven never re- 
belled and dragged men through their temptations into sin and misery, 
still He would have united Himself, in some form, to the human race, 
so as to raise it beyond the position which it occupied in Paradise. 
Intimations of this fact, clear and forcible, abound in the revelation of 
God ; and the nature of man and the nature of Christ both demand 
this." — Dr. Gansy in the Messenger of Dec. 24, 1873. 



